Stephanie Doyle

Calculated Risk

© 2005

Dear Reader,

You’re about to read a Silhouette Bombshell novel and enter a world full of excitement, suspense and women who stand strong in the face of danger and do what it takes to triumph over the toughest adversaries. And don’t forget a touch of thrilling romance to sweeten the deal. Our bombshells always get their men, good and bad!

Debra Webb kicks off the month with Silent Weapon, the innovative story of Merri Walters, a deaf woman who goes undercover in a ruthless criminal’s mansion and reads his chilling plans right off his lips!

Hold on to your hats for Payback, by Harper Allen, the latest in the Athena Force continuity. Assassin Dawn O’Shaughnessy is out to take down the secret lab that created her and then betrayed her-but she’s got to complete one last mission for them, or her superhealing genes will self-destruct before she gets payback…

Step into the lush and dangerous world of The Orchid Hunter, by Sandra K. Moore. Think “botanist” and “excitement” don’t match? Think again, as this fearless heroine’s search for a rare orchid turns into a dangerous battle of wills in the steamy rain forest.

And don’t miss the twist and turns as a gutsy genius races to break a deadly code, trap a slippery terrorist and steal back the trust of her former CIA mentor, in Calculated Risk, by Stephanie Doyle!

Strong, sexy, suspenseful…that’s Silhouette Bombshell! Please send your comments to me, c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279.

Sincerely,

Natashya Wilson

Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Bombshell

For my brother, Bob

My version of what happens

to those really brainy kids from MIT…

Chapter 1

I’m dead now. You know what to do, G.G.

Sabrina Masters stared at the e-mail displayed on her computer screen and released a deep breath. Arnold was gone.

A true believer in the art of science and math, he’d been a mentor. Certainly, he’d been one of her few intellectual equals. But more importantly, he’d cared about her. More, she knew, than her own father ever had. At least Arnold always looked out for her.

Her head fell forward because it seemed too heavy to hold up. She could feel the tears well behind her eyes and wanted to stop them. But she decided that Arnold deserved a few tears.

He’d been alone in the world. No wife, no children, no family to speak of. He’d made the computer his wife. The work his child. But the computer wouldn’t cry and the work wouldn’t mourn for him.

She wondered if he realized now that he was gone that there had never been anyone truly significant in his life. If he did, if that knowledge somehow made him sad, she hoped he at least knew how heartbroken she was.

You know what to do, G.G.

The old nickname brought a smile to her lips. G.G.: Girl Genius.

Sabrina glanced at the number typed at the bottom and instantly memorized it, plugging it into her brain alongside every other piece of information that she’d ever stumbled across. Sometimes she wondered if one day her head might fill up to such a capacity that it would simply explode from the strain. The gruesome image did nothing to improve her mood.

“I don’t know if I can do this, Arnold,” she stated aloud to the almost empty room, in the practically empty house that was her home in an out-of-the-way, nowhere town in Pennsylvania.

Briefly, she entertained the idea that as a ghost he might be able to answer her. She waited a beat. Nothing. If there was a heaven and Arnold was in it, he was trying to strike up a game of chess with Einstein. Probably convinced that he could beat him, too. The last thing Arnold would care about after his death would be the fate of the nation. Not when he barely had cared about it when he was alive.

You and me, G.G. We’re a lot alike.

He used to tell her that all the time. She’d always thought he was talking about their strange intellect. But maybe he wasn’t. The idea that they had more in common worried her. In fact, it frightened her.

Sabrina slipped her hand into the back pocket of her jeans to extract her cell phone. She dialed the number Arnold had given her and waited.

“Hello?”

“Is this Assistant Director Krueger?” she asked, somewhat surprised. Arnold must have given her the CIA director’s personal cell phone number as a way to cut directly to the chase.

“Yes?”

“Arnold Salinski is dead.”

“I know. Sabrina Masters?”

“Yep.”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. Then, “We should talk.”

She could practically feel the weight of this moment and the impact it was going to have on her life.

“Yep.”

The night was bitterly cold, as it should be in January in Pennsylvania, but the sky was as clear as glass. Krueger had chosen Gettysburg to meet. A full moon glowed over the frozen battlefields adding a touch of eeriness that, quite frankly, it did not need. The place was spooky enough in broad daylight. Sabrina wished she’d told Krueger to meet her at a damn diner in town.

Shaking off the creepy factor, she focused on the clandestine meeting ahead. Following the winding drive through the various memorial sites scattered about in the woods, she stopped at the third one. The name Cowan etched in stone caught her eye.

She bounced out of the Jeep and shut the door behind her, glancing around the area as she did. The wind caught her hair and sent it flying about in a bad imitation of Medusa. She wished she’d thought to bring a hat. Her ears were going to freeze. Forcing her hands into the pockets of her down-feather coat, she hopped up and down a few times to keep her circulation going and, if she was honest with herself, to keep her nerves at bay.

He materialized out of the trees like a ghost and once again Sabrina was reminded why CIA operatives were often called spooks. Because she didn’t know what Krueger looked like, she wrapped her hand around the Colt Defender inside her pocket. A girl couldn’t be too careful.

“Krueger?” she asked.

“Masters?” he wanted to know first.

She nodded, then he stepped closer to her. Apparently, he knew what she looked like because his shoulders seemed to relax slightly. He was a hair over six feet and had a broad build. His face was deeply lined, probably a combination of stress and age. He wore jeans, a ski jacket and sneakers. And a hat. A practical man, she decided. And a prepared one.

“We’ll talk in your car,” he suggested.

Secure enough to release her hold on the gun, she opened the door, got back inside and leaned over to unlock the passenger door. He lifted himself into the seat.

“I checked your record. You were fired from the CIA almost ten years ago,” he began.

“You’re not the most subtle fellow, are you?” Then she admitted what he already knew. “I was.”

“Willful insubordination.”

Sabrina winced at the description It was a phrase that never failed to irritate her. It was on the tip of her tongue to remind him that she had been barely out of her teens when she’d been given that label, but she held back. That’s not what this was about. Besides, the description wasn’t inaccurate. Or at least hadn’t been at the time. But that was ten years ago. People change. She was sort of hoping she was one of them.

“And here all this time I thought it had been my attendance.”

He didn’t smile. “As you know, Arnold has selected you to continue his project.”

“I do.”

“What do you know about it?”

Sabrina shook her head. “Not much. I know he was working from a secure location. Even he didn’t know where he was. I know it was important. I know that he thought I was the only one who would understand what he was doing.”

“You really believe that’s true?” Krueger asked her.

“I don’t think I’d be sitting here right now if you didn’t believe it was true.”

Reluctantly, the senior agent nodded. Sabrina could tell he was pissed, though. It was there in the clench of his jaw and the way his mouth turned down into a deep scowl, entrenching the crevices of his face.

But his anger didn’t make sense unless…A few pieces of the puzzle she’d been playing with fell into place and quickly she understood. She smiled at Arnold’s audacity even from the grave. “This isn’t about me continuing his work. You’ve lost access to it, haven’t you?”

Krueger said nothing. He didn’t need to.

“Arnold wasn’t a team player,” Sabrina remarked. It was something that the CIA should have known.

“For sixteen years he worked under contract for us,” Krueger spat in reply. “But that was the only arrangement he would agree to. He never wanted to work officially for the United States government. I guess he thought it would corrupt him.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Sabrina told him. “Arnold wouldn’t have worked for any government. He didn’t believe in sides. He didn’t believe in ideology. He believed in science. He believed in math. You guys paid him the most, and gave him the best opportunity to pursue his work. That was all that mattered to him.”

He turned to her, his scowl still in place, and she knew he was lumping her with Arnold. She twisted a little in her seat. “What do you want from me?”

“What I’m about to tell you is-”

“Classified,” Sabrina finished. “Spare me the security and national interest lecture and get to it.”

Krueger looked down at his hands, then turned to her with an extremely serious expression on his face. “Get to it? All right. Ms. Masters what if I told you some very important people in the Company believe you may be the key to bringing down one of the most dangerous men on the planet?”

She allowed a moment for the words to sink in. This is what she wanted. What she’d imagined when she first read Arnold’s e-mail. This is what she’d been waiting for, for almost ten years. This was a new beginning for her. And it wasn’t until now, until she actually was confronted with it, that she knew how precious, how important that beginning really was to her.

But Krueger didn’t need to know any of that. Instead she offered him a flippant response, one that he probably expected.

“Does this mean I’m going to get my job back? Because I’ve got to tell you, these days it’s hell finding work for a genius.”

“The project Arnold was working on was known as Deep Throat,” he explained, his tone flat. “It was an ingestible isotope. A variation on lithium-6 that targets the epidermis. When it’s digested it breaks down over time and a body’s exposure to sun’s ultraviolet rays and emits a pattern of low-level radiation that can be detected by a high-powered X-ray machine contained in a satellite. Once the target is identified, the satellite’s computer continually sends a series of Global Positioning coordinates that allow us to track the movements of those who have been tagged.”

Sabrina absorbed the information. “Radiation? How can you distinguish between the targets and every cancer patient undergoing treatment in the world?”

Krueger shook his head. “All I know is that the pattern is distinct because of the nature of the isotope. Only Arnold knew all of the logistics of how it worked. But it does work. It has been the single most significant breakthrough in the war against terrorism. You’ve read about the many failings of the intelligence communities in the past few years. Our human intel is weak. We can’t infiltrate cells because often all the members are blood related. We can’t turn them with money because of their strident belief in their cause. When they stop using modern technology, like cell phones and computers, and they go underground to live in caves, they’re all but invisible to us. This project has changed that. All we needed to do was tap their food source. Terrorist cell leaders will have their food tested for poison before eating anything, but the isotope was undetectable.”

“No symptoms?”

“Possibly some nausea or vomiting a few days after ingestion, but nothing that couldn’t be explained by an outbreak of the flu or dysentery, which is not uncommon given their typical living conditions.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“As I said it was working. We were getting daily updates from Arnold on known terrorists and their locations throughout the world. The group didn’t matter. We targeted leaders in Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRA, Al Qaeda, you name it.”

“Why am I suddenly getting nervous?” Sabrina asked rhetorically.

“One of the areas of great concern to both the CIA and the FBI is the fact that there are terrorist cells operating within the United States. With the success of Deep Throat, we felt confident in allowing some terrorists on our watch lists to enter the country so we could follow them and let them lead us to these cells where we could monitor their activities. No one of any consequence. No planners, as we call them. Without leadership and direction these cells can lie dormant for years. Allowing the infiltration of low-level grunts, we would be able to locate the cells without a great risk of precipitating an event.”

That’s why she was nervous. They got greedy. “Let me see if I got this. You let some of the bad guys in the country-bad guys you hope don’t have the brains to plan anything. Only now Arnold is dead and you can’t see them anymore. And you didn’t think to have, oh, I don’t know, a backup plan in case something did happen to Arnold? Forget his heart, what if he tripped and hit his head or something?” she asked incredulously.

“The level of security he has in place goes much further than we anticipated or were led to believe. Regardless, it’s not like we had much of a choice. Deep Throat advanced us years in the war against these killers. At a moment’s notice, we could locate and destroy anyone who was tagged and anyone close to those who were tagged. You think Israel has just been guessing real good when they fire those missiles from helicopters at moving cars. It was worth the risk to have the data when all we had to do was agree to Arnold’s terms.”

Sabrina could well imagine what those terms would be. “An isolated location. No people. An endless pot of coffee and a single server?”

Krueger nodded. “The download of data from the satellite was encrypted, using an encryption code that Arnold himself wrote, and transmitted to his computer only. Data transmissions to us were always done in person. We would send an agent daily to pick up the various sets of coordinates for each terrorist that had been tagged. When the agent showed up yesterday Arnold was already dead. Naturally, the computer is password protected. And when the agent checked-”

“He saw that it was booby-trapped, too,” Sabrina finished. Arnold defined the word paranoia. “You can’t move it. And if you try to hack into it, it will blow. Any chance you can redirect the data transmission from the satellite…?”

Krueger shook his head slowly.

“Okay. I get it.” And Sabrina now understood exactly what Arnold was telling her in his last e-mail.

It’s time for you to come home, Sabrina. You’ve been gone too long. They’re going to need your help. If you’re reading this, it’s because I’m dead now. You know what to do, G.G.

“You want me to hack his password and figure out a way to decrypt the data so you can find your missing bad guys.”

“That’s part of it,” Krueger said somewhat stiltedly.

Her eyebrows arched. “That’s a pretty big part if you ask me.”

“There is another element you bring to the table. There is another party in this war who, so far, we have failed to tag. A player who we believe would be as interested in Arnold’s data as we are.”

It didn’t take much brainpower to figure out who that was, and she had more than her fair share. She had been out of the game a long time, but there were only a few players who could avoid the great and mighty reach of the CIA. One was obvious, the other not so much. She was guessing it was the dark horse.

“Kahsan,” Sabrina breathed. “You still haven’t caught him.”

“No,” Krueger answered flatly. “We know he was responsible for the hotel in Milan. We know he took down the plane over Turkey. We know these things, yet we can never get close enough to take him out. Forget tagging him, we’ve never gotten a decent read on his movements to know what food source to go after. He’s got to be taken out. There are thousands of terrorist groups, small insignificant bands of fanatics who believe in something so strongly they are willing to kill and die for it. Terrorist attacks, by any group, are a headline story. Kahsan gives these minor groups an opportunity to play on the world stage. And he doesn’t give a damn about the cause. For him it’s only about the money.”

“So what’s your plan?”

The senior agent breathed in slowly, then exhaled, giving his words gravity. “We want you to contact him. We want you to tell him about Arnold’s project. We want you to tell him that, for a price, you can give him access to the location of known terrorists that are currently operating within the United States.”

Sabrina listened intently, trying to see the endgame as Krueger did. She knew Kahsan was a mercenary without followers. The terrorists operating inside the country were killers waiting for a planner. As a group they were little more than a loaded gun until someone came along and pulled the trigger. As long as Americans ended up dead, it really didn’t matter who that person was. Putting the two of them together would be a volatile combination.

If Kahsan could claim that he controlled a terrorist cell inside the U.S. then every anti-American group in the world would be offering him money to mobilize them. It would no doubt be his biggest payday to date. His greatest infamy.

“You’re serious?” Sabrina tried to wrap her mind around the dangers of actually letting Kahsan inside the country. Then she thought about the flip side of the argument and what stopping him might do for the war on terror. Then she thought about something more basic. “Why me?”

“Your résumé is perfect.”

“Really? No typos?”

Krueger stared her into silence. “Arnold told us that there was a key to breaking his encryption code and he promised us that upon his death we would be given that key. What he sent to us in an e-mail was your name. His idea of doing us a favor I suppose.”

And me, Sabrina thought. He thought he was doing her a favor, too.

“We considered your history. The CIA’s Youth Adoption Program recruited you when you were sixteen. You trained for years to be a field operative, but you were fired when you failed to perform up to standard. Your father works for the NSA, but the two of you are estranged. For the past ten years you’ve wandered about the country using your unique skills to make big scores at various casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. That is, until the owners caught on to you and barred you from their establishments. Now you sell secrets to tabloid magazines to make ends meet. You have no particular political allegiance. No husband, no boyfriend. No family at all. And if your bank account information is accurate, not a whole lot of money. You do, however, have a connection to Arnold Salinski that is easily traceable.”

Sabrina smiled weakly once she realized the intent of his little bibliography. “You’re right. It’s a pretty good résumé for a traitor.”

“Exactly. We want you to convince Kahsan you’re willing to sell him access to Arnold’s data.”

“What’s going to make him think-”

“He’ll have access to the same information about you that we have. And he’ll learn through channels that the CIA is planning to pick you up and take you to Arnold’s computer. That will be confirmed by you. You’ll explain that you’ve been contacted by us. You’ll tell him that once you know the location of the server, you’ll pass it on to him. You’ll let him know that he needs to meet you at the location with five million dollars in bonds on hand and that once you have it, you’ll hack through Arnold’s password and decrypt the data he needs. He doesn’t have to know how unlikely either task is.”

“What about the agents he’ll assume are with me?”

“He’ll know that’s his problem to deal with.”

“But you’ll have a whole team of people on the ground ready to take him out when he comes,” Sabrina added.

“No,” Krueger countered. “Not a team.”

She tried to imagine a legitimate reason for that, but when she failed, she asked, “Uh… Why not?”

“For one, if he thought this was a trap, he wouldn’t get anywhere near it. We know he has sources inside the Company. It’s just one of the ways he’s managed to elude us for so long. A job this big, this important, would get out to everyone despite its classification. We want him to tap those sources and come up blank.”

“And the other reason?”

“What we’re talking about is a huge risk,” Krueger stated slowly, clearly willing her to understand. “What we’re talking about is not something that if the president knew about it, he would or could agree to.”

“Shit,” Sabrina hissed. “This is the part where you tell me you have to cover your ass.”

“Not my ass. The president’s ass. The American people don’t want another attack in this country. They certainly would not appreciate the idea of their government agencies willingly allowing key terrorists to move freely about inside our borders.”

“You think?” she drawled.

“This is a highly offensive maneuver, but one I think is necessary. There are only three people who are aware of the plan I laid out. The director of the CIA, you and myself. It must remain this way. As far as everyone else in the agency is concerned your only mission is to decrypt the data. An agent will pick you up to take you to the server’s location. You will convince that agent that it was your idea to lure Kahsan into the open. Regardless of what happens from that point forward, your mission stays the same. If it looks like we’re pulling the plug, you must convince that agent to continue to work with you. Or you operate on your own. The agent is expendable, do you understand? Kahsan is the primary target. He’s the only thing that matters.”

Sabrina processed that. “What if I make contact with Kahsan and he has me kidnapped before your agent comes?”

“You don’t know where the computer is. Kidnapping you makes no sense. He has to have you and the computer together for this to work. Once there, either you or the agent will take him out on sight.”

“And if I fail, and somehow Kahsan gets the data and meets up with the other bad guys and boom!, the White House ends up as toast, then what?”

“Then the CIA will disavow all knowledge of any plan to bring him into the country and you’ll be known as the worst traitor in American history since Benedict Arnold.”

“You guys suck,” Sabrina muttered.

“It’s not going to come to that. Without you he can’t get the data, without the data he can’t get to the cells. Besides if something does happen to you…”

“You make that sound like a broken fingernail, when what you mean is if he kills me.”

“If something does happen to you…we’ll still have a bead on Kahsan that we’ve never had before. And I personally will see to it that he doesn’t leave the country alive.” Krueger sighed. “I know what we’re asking is a lot.”

There was the understatement of the century. Sabrina pulled her hand through her hair and thought about what she’d been doing the same time last night. She was pretty sure she’d been in the middle of a hot bath and a whiskey. Now she was being recruited as bait for one of the most frightening killers on the planet. Life certainly had some interesting twists.

“You’re sure he’ll come?” She wanted to know.

“Reasonably sure. Our profilers tell us the man is an egomaniac. It’s not just money, but the attention that will follow if he pulls this off that will attract him. It’s a hell of a carrot. If he doesn’t come, of course we’ll still give you an opportunity to get through Arnold’s password and decrypt the data.”

“Oh joy!” she squealed facetiously. “I still have that opportunity.”

“Sabrina, may I call you that?”

Unbelievable. They were here discussing what was possibly the riskiest plan of the century to capture one of the most dangerous men ever, and he was worried about etiquette. Strange as it seemed in that instant she both lost a little and gained a little respect for him.

“Sure.”

“Sabrina, why did you call me?”

Good fucking question. Because Arnold told her this was a chance to get back in the game. Because she thought she was ready to get back in the game. But Krueger was offering her a chance to be quarterback in the Super Bowl. She didn’t know if she was ready for this.

So she ignored his question and asked him one of her own. “What if I say no? What happens?”

His answer was too quick. “We’ll put plan B into place. We believe there might be someone else who can perform the same role we’re asking you to perform, but because of your previous training you were our top pick.”

“Who?”

He hesitated.

“I need to know. I need to know whose head is going to be on the proverbial chopping block if I pass.”

“You’ve heard of Sal Ploxm…”

“A hacker?” she blurted. “You’re going to use some virus-spreading geek to catch Kahsan? Do you even know who he is?”

“We’re following some leads. He’s had success hacking into some of the most secure networks. That and the fact that he works outside the law, we believe he’s the next logical choice.”

Sabrina considered him for a moment. The CIA was resorting to an insubordinate ex-agent and a hacker. One thing became crystal clear. “You don’t have anybody on your staff who can hack through Arnold’s password, let alone decrypt his code. Not even close. You know that your project is over and that this… is a last-ditch attempt to salvage something from it.”

He didn’t deny it. “The radiation patterns will fade eventually and no, we don’t believe anyone can access the information in time. We have enlisted cryptologists from every department in the government to work on one of Arnold’s predecessor programs in an attempt to see if anyone could come close. No one has. Not even your father. As far as we’re concerned the project is a write-off. The FBI has sent agents out to the last known location of those people we’ve tagged. If we lose them somehow, then we’ll merely revert to our previous methods-good old-fashioned legwork-to find them again. But in the meantime, the lure of this data might be our only opportunity to push Kahsan out of hiding. We’re going to take it.”

“Arnold thinks I can do it,” she suggested. “If you gave me a chance-”

“We don’t have that kind of time. As I said, Kahsan is not without resources. We have to move quickly and we have to make it look real. Salinski’s death will leak. There’s no stopping that. This has to go down like a well choreographed ballet.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “It’s a list of Web sites that he uses where you should be able to make contact. I need to know now if you’re in.”

If she wasn’t, then the job would go to Sal Ploxm, a virus pirate who got off on infecting systems that were deemed foolproof. Apparently, there was no firewall that could stop him. A hacker with more balls than brains as far as she was concerned. If he was that talented, he’d be making more money and fewer headlines. The fact that she knew his name meant he got off on the rush. A hacker like that had to have one hell of an ego.

Was this the person she wanted responsible for heading up a mission to take down Kahsan?

Then she chuckled softly. Hell, she thought. Who would have thought that she should be the person to take him down? Who was she but a drifter, a cheat and an ex-operative?

Sabrina focused on the stone burial monument directly in front of her windshield.

Cowan.

She didn’t know who the poor son of a bitch was, but he’d died for something. He’d believed in something. His country, his family, who knew. He gave his life in what Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion. For too long Sabrina had only been devoted to herself. Frankly, she was growing bored.

“Don’t you want to know what you get in return?”

Of course he would be expecting her to ask that. It’s who he thought she was.

“Absolutely,” she lied.

“There is a sizable bounty on Kahsan’s head. If you agree, if your work leads to his capture or death, you would be entitled to it.”

She glanced at the monument again. Cowan hadn’t done it for the money. In fact, she was embarrassed they were having this conversation in front of his grave. What if he was somewhere shaking his head at her, more than a little disappointed in this new breed of American hero.

Without a word, Sabrina took the slip of paper from his hand and shoved it in her pocket.

“Just one more thing,” Sabrina said, catching his arm before he could leave. “This agent that you’re sending. The one I need to convince…make sure he or she is damn good.”

“Only the best.”

Chapter 2

“Hey, Bubba. What’s shaking?”

The hardened old bartender with a missing front tooth looked up from his beer taps to smile at his latest customer. “What’s a girlie like you doing in a place like this?” he asked, performing their common ritual.

“Just staying out of trouble,” Sabrina replied with a smile.

“The usual?”

She considered that for a moment, then ordered. “Make it a double.”

She shrugged out of her winter paraphernalia, a task that took almost more effort than she had, and waited for Bubba to finish pouring another customer’s beer. She sat down on the high stool with the ripped leather seat and sighed at the familiar comfort.

Peace and a little distraction. It’s what she’d been looking for when she decided to go out tonight and she always seemed to find it at Bubba’s. Maybe it was his smile. Or maybe it was his whiskey. It didn’t matter.

It was Monday. Three days had passed since her conversation with Krueger. Three days since she’d followed orders and done what she needed to do, but still no contact from any agent. She’d been edgy, irritable and impatient. To top it all off, a major chunk of crown molding had fallen from her living-room ceiling.

That’s when she’d decided she needed a break.

The crowd was light tonight. A few diners sat at the tables along the wall eating burgers and fries. There was a group of men at a five top in the back. And she sat alone at the bar except for an older gentleman with a semifamiliar face who sat two stools down. She nodded toward the older man and he replied with a similar nod. Then they both went back to staring straight ahead into the rows of bottles that lined what Bubba liked to call his top shelf but what was in reality his only shelf.

It was protocol among the regulars to respect the nod and the straight-ahead stare. Most people came to this place looking to unwind. Sometimes that called for small talk. Sometimes it didn’t. Tonight she didn’t want to hear about the weather, or the score of the basketball game, or why the economy sucked. She just wanted a little time to not think about what was going to happen. And perversely when it was going to happen.

Krueger had told her they needed to move quickly. Leave it to the government to interpret three days as quick.

Reaching for the bowl of peanuts that sat on the bar, Sabrina studied them for a moment. Finally, she decided, based primarily on her current level of hunger that not too many grubby hands had already foraged through the bowl, therefore they were safe to eat.

As a bonus they were salted.

After all, Bubba’s did have a reputation to maintain as the respectable bar in town. The competition with Nick’s down the block was often fierce. A little thing like dirt-free, salt-covered nuts could make all the difference.

“Eighty-two,” Sabrina counted before she popped a handful into her mouth. A faint sound from the TV that sat on a high ledge in the corner of the bar caught her attention. Sabrina turned and saw the logo of a familiar show appear on the screen. “Hey, Bubba, you’ve got to turn this up. Entrée Hollywood is going to have some hot scoop tonight.”

With a gleam in his eye, Bubba found the remote and increased the volume to the furthest dash on the right.

“…And in other news, it was discovered that Marsha Lowery, the second finalist in American Star Maker, had previously worked as a prostitute known to her customers as Sweet Sugar in the high class LasVegas brothel called Mother’s Milk. Several men came forward today after the story broke to share their memories and experiences with the then twenty-eight, now thirty-four-year-old hooker.

“…Sweetie and me…we were more than just friends if you get my drift.”

Sabrina chuckled to herself as Bubba put the double shot of Jack Daniel’s in a reasonably clean glass in front of her. Yeah, Bubba’s would, in her mind, always be head and shoulders over Nick’s.

“How did you find that out?” Bubba questioned with a sly smile.

“I’ve got my ways.” Sabrina wiggled her eyebrows in another old dance she and Bubba had often performed. She reached for her drink and continued to watch as the broadcast cut to one man after another, each john more pathetic than the one before, until finally a sobbing Marsha filled the screen and confessed her misspent past. She also asked the American public to forgive her for lying about her age.

It was a hell of a moment for TV.

“Shoot, girl, you can find out anything. You should be out there working for the CIA,” Bubba said.

“That’s the idea,” she muttered under her breath.

Three days. Three days and nothing. She didn’t like the smell of it. What if this was some kind of setup? What if Krueger wasn’t who he said he was? She’d done a preliminary check after she’d received Arnold’s e-mail, so she knew he wasn’t lying about his position in the organization, but what did that mean? Doubt crept in from every corner of her mind. To push it back she took another sip of her drink and let the burn of the whiskey coat her throat.

“Hey, you know who you need to get next? That really bad dude.”

“There are a lot of really bad dudes, Bubba.”

“No, you know who I mean, the baddest.”

Kahsan, Sabrina thought. He was the baddest.

“That one who keeps breaking all the computers. That Ploxm guy.”

Sabrina smoothed out her expression at the mention of her competition’s name. Had they decided to go with him after all? Had the play already been called out to the field while she’d been left to sit on the bench? Man, she was going to be annoyed if that was the case.

She shook her head and smiled at Bubba’s irritation. The bartender still hadn’t gotten over the fact that he’d been the victim of a cyber virus. “Are you still mad about that? I fixed your computer for you, didn’t I?”

“But I lost some important e-mails,” he wailed.

“You’ll find another girlfriend on the Internet, Bubba. And she’ll replace all those love e-mails you lost, I promise.” Sabrina tipped the glass back and finished her shot. “Another.”

Smoothly, the bartender pulled the empty glass away and quietly replaced it with another. There was no judgment. She and Bubba understood each other.

Sabrina felt the customer next to her turn and stare. She stared back. “Problem?”

He nodded to the TV with his chin. “You found that stuff out about the girl?”

“The information was there to be found.”

The old man looked skeptical. “The producers of that show couldn’t find it. Heck, they thought she was only twenty-four.”

“Yeah, well, I aim to serve the public by providing the truth.”

She’d used the line before, but tonight it tasted particularly sour in her mouth. What she did was hack allegedly unhackable systems to find information on celebrities that she could then sell to the tabloids. Certainly, not a noble profession. But at least she didn’t contaminate that system with a virus that would shut down the entire network. She was head and shoulders more honorable than Ploxm in that regard. After all, trashy newspaper stories would come and go, but hard drives and data…those were lost forever.

Still Bubba praised her contributions to society much like a father would, if only her father knew where she was or what she did for a living. “Oh, that’s our Sabrina all right. A smart one, I tell you. She was the first to find out about that one Academy Award-winning actor who was gay. And the first to figure out that the big-time cable newscaster was a drug addict. There’s no secret she can’t find. I keep telling her she should go to work for the government, but she doesn’t listen to me.”

“They couldn’t afford me.” Sabrina said. Another old line. She wondered when she had gotten so tired of it. “Speaking of affording me…how bad is the tab for this month?”

Bubba checked the book he kept under the counter and winced a little.

That bad. Sabrina thought about the state of her checking account and winced herself. She’d sold a few stories to the Star Watcher last month, but was still waiting on her check. She hadn’t been completely joking to Krueger when she said finding a job, the right job for her anyway, was tough. A steady income would be nice for a change.

Sabrina shook her head. Yeah right, that’s why you got back in the game, so you could pay off your bar tab.

“Bubba, if you could just give me a few more days-”

“Oh sure, girlie, sure. You know, if you’re interested… Well, it’s not legal or anything, but those fellas in the back behind the partition, if I didn’t know better I would say they were playing cards. Now, I can’t be held responsible for what I don’t know. “

Instantly, she straightened on the stool and saw the chips on the table. Her mouth watered.

“Travelers?”

“They’re here for some convention at the college, but the hotels were all booked up so they’re staying at the Stop and Sleep just outside of town. Came here looking for some food and beer and a chance to unwind.”

“Bubba, are you telling me there is a group of men back there playing poker with real money and not one of them knows who I am?”

Bubba merely smiled. “Like I said, I don’t know about any gambling or anything like that. Just looks like they’re having a nice conversation to me.”

Sabrina leaned over the bar and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Spot me a twenty?”

The man pulled the money from the register and slid the single bill across the bar top.

Sabrina pocketed it and pushed her hands into her jeans. She flicked her curls off her face and strove for an innocent dupe expression.

It had been so long since she’d played cards. She could almost feel her hands sweating. When they found out about her in Vegas, she’d been banned from every casino on the Strip. It had taken less than two days for Atlantic City to catch on to her. She’d made the trip to Monte Carlo once, but she reserved that spot as her fallback for emergencies only.

Naturally, she’d played out her welcome with everyone in town. For the most part she didn’t think about it unless times got really tough and she was forced to seek out an Indian Reservation. But with a bar tab looming over her head and a cell phone bill due that she simply had to pay-especially now-she was willing to take the opportunity that had presented itself.

“Gentlemen. Hello.”

The group of five lifted their heads and checked her out from her boots, up her long, jean-clad legs to the bulky, gray wool sweater she wore. Maybe some thought she was an overdressed hooker looking for a customer. Maybe others thought she was a cop about to bust up their game, it was hard to tell. They would find out soon enough who she was.

“I’m bored and I’ve got twenty bucks to blow. Mind if I sit in on the next hand?”

The group looked at each other, then one man with a mustache shrugged. “I’m out. Let her sit in.”

A portly fellow in the corner chortled. “I don’t have a problem taking a woman’s money,” he warned her.

“That’s good. I don’t have trouble taking anyone’s money either,” she fired back as she took mustache man’s chair. “I’m Sabrina.”

“Chuck.”

“Paul.”

“Bill.”

“Mike.”

“Jim.” The one with the mustache, who was now only a spectator, finally introduced himself.

“So what’s the game?”

“Texas Hold’em,” Chuck, the portly one, announced dramatically. “We’re playing all or nothing. Last man standing wins. Or woman.” He laughed again.

Sabrina furrowed her brow. “Texas…that’s a poker game?”

Mike was kind enough to explain the rules to her and Bill took the deck and shuffled it fresh, tossing her the first card.

When she looked at her two cards, her face remained expressionless. Pocket eights, a spade and a club. Instantly, Sabrina calculated the odds of winning with such a hand and began to do her thing. She watched the flop and memorized the cards that had been turned over. Then she studied each of the players in turn looking for tells that would clue her into what they were holding.

Going with the dumb blonde approach, she stumbled over the betting. “I want to raise. Raise, that’s the right word, isn’t it?”

“You got it, honey,” Mike told her.

She beamed at him. “Then I want to raise five dollars.”

Paul would be the only one to call her bet. And Paul would lose with a jack and ten off suit and nothing in the flop, turn or river that would help. Bill had tossed his cards over in frustration when he folded, or possibly as a ploy to gauge the table’s reaction. But because of that, she now knew that at least two of the diamonds were on the bottom of the stack.

When Mike started betting heavily against the three diamonds in the flop, she knew that he was looking for the flush. But with only a twenty-nine percent chance of having one of the remaining nine possible diamonds in the deck turn up, she was a lock with her triple threes and she went all in. Sabrina took the pot and eliminated Mike.

Then next to go down was Bill. His shuffling was getting looser with each beer he consumed, which made it ridiculously easy for her to determine what cards were left in the deck and what would be coming out on top.

Glancing down at the ace and seven suited she had in her hand, all Sabrina had to do was keep raising and wait for it. On the flop? No. On the turn? No. There it was…the other ace on the river. Bill had gone all in with the pocket kings. She beat him soundly, and smiled sweetly as she gathered up his chips.

It was like taking candy from a baby. Her next target was Chuck.

A little less than three hours later and three hundred and eighty dollars richer, Sabrina beamed at the table. “Can you believe that? And I had never even heard of this game until tonight.”

The four losers grumbled about beginner’s luck and Jim smiled back at her, apparently pleased he’d left the table before she sat down.

Sabrina counted out the cash and laid down two hundred dollars on the bar in front of Bubba, plus two twenties. One for the spot, the other for the payoff. “That about cover me?”

“That about does it,” Bubba chuckled, pocketing the two twenties. “See you around, girlie.”

After bundling herself back into her winter gear, Sabrina gave the bartender a negligent wave as she walked toward the front door. Behind her she could hear the five guys grilling Bubba as to whether or not she was a ringer. She heard Bubba laugh out loud and thought that at least she had done something good tonight.

Realizing she’d forgotten her hat, Sabrina pulled it out of her front pocket and tugged it on past her ears. She took a deep breath and opened the door to the cold. Walking down the empty sidewalk toward her house, situated just off the main street, she cursed herself for not bringing the Jeep. She hadn’t wanted to risk drinking and driving.

Not that she’d hurt anyone but herself tonight. It was a time of hibernation for Stansfield, Pennsylvania. Once the football season of the state college nearby was over, the town dwindled from a bustling hot spot on weekends to its regular smattering of locals. A few staff members employed by the college. A few shopkeeps and professionals. Two doctors, four lawyers and one sheriff. And Bubba and Nick, of course. Two men whose establishments tried to keep most of the coal miners, now long unemployed since the great “shutdown of ’94,” drunk and numb to their woes.

“What the hell am I still doing here?” she asked the empty newspaper dispenser as she walked by. It wasn’t the first time she had asked herself the question. It’s just that when she did, the answer was always the same. She had nowhere else to go.

Three days and nothing. Maybe Krueger didn’t understand what it had meant for her to take this assignment. Maybe he didn’t understand how desperate she was to get her life back on track. It was a very real fear for her that if she stayed on this endless path to nowhere, she might just disappear. At some point she decided she’d couldn’t let that happen.

What if he found Ploxm?

No, she told herself firmly. It wasn’t possible. She had the best credentials. He’d said so. Arnold had been one of her mentors. There was no question she had the best chance of cracking his code.

And besides, she hadn’t done anything to get fired.

Yet.

The bank across the street boasted a new sign that blinked the time and temperature. It was 10:52 and eighteen degrees Fahrenheit. Inexplicably, Sabrina converted the number to Celsius and continued on her way until a gust of extra cold wind whipped around her. Even though there were no cars coming she paused out of habit before she crossed the street.

That’s when she heard a sound behind her. Shoes on the sidewalk.

Instantly, her senses were heightened. It could be Krueger or whomever he’d sent to take her to Arnold’s cabin. But why follow her? Why not just make his presence known when she was waiting for him? The other alternatives surfaced.

Without making any sudden movements she continued on her way down the sidewalk at a slightly faster clip. In her mind, she began to measure the distance between herself and her house. Then she took into consideration the length of her stride and her conditioning and made the calculation of how long it would take her to reach her house if she began to run at top speed.

Seven minutes and thirty-eight seconds.

She was really out of shape.

Making a mental note to begin more regular workouts, Sabrina focused on the next aspect of the equation. The question was how tall and how fast was the man following her. That he was following her wasn’t an issue. Her body knew it. It was there in the adrenaline that was pumping through her system. Built-in genetic mechanisms began to take over and the message her muscles received was flight.

Instantly, she took off into a full sprint and cursed. The bulky down coat she wore, the scarf that blew around her neck, the ladies’ construction boots that kept her feet toasty, she’d factored none of these into her equation. She considered the extra weight, the drag time against the wind, and listened to the pace of the steps of the man who was now giving chase behind her.

He was tall. And fast.

Given her own recalibration, factored against the rate at which he was closing the distance, escape was statistically impossible. Sabrina had to come up with a new plan.

The only option left to her was to fight.

Chapter 3

Even as she ran, Sabrina took stock of her surroundings. When engaged in a physical confrontation, a fighter should, if possible, control the environment, the weaponry and the enemy. It was an adage that Sabrina took very seriously. Veering off around the last building on the block to her right, adjacent to nothing but an empty lot, she found the Dumpster exactly where she expected it to be.

It was always hard to tell what a person might find in an alley. But there was always potential for loose crate slats with protruding nails, or any other type of debris that might serve as a ready-made shank.

She stopped in her tracks while she scanned the contents around the Dumpster. Inhaling deep cleansing breaths, both to control her fear and to reoxygenate her muscles, Sabrina considered removing her jacket, but decided not to. It might serve as protection if her pursuer had a knife.

If he had a gun, then the game was pretty much over because, like an idiot, she’d left hers at home. Krueger had assured her that she was safe from any kind of kidnapping so she hadn’t felt the need to walk around town armed. Besides that, she didn’t have a holster for the damn thing. When she’d shoved it in the back of her jeans it annoyed her. It was a really big gun.

Sabina wanted to kick herself for her own stupidity, but there was no time. When she found nothing useful as a weapon on the ground she cursed. Her next step was to try inside the Dumpster, but it was too late. The sound of the shoes on pavement grew louder as the man chasing her turned the corner.

There was nothing else to do but assume a balanced stance and wait.

She saw his shadow in the moon at the end of the empty lot. Puffs of chilled air emanated from his mouth and nostrils as he, too, tried to catch his breath after the chase. She couldn’t see his face, but his silhouette proved what she had earlier suspected.

He was tall. That he was a man had never really been in doubt. The sound of the shoes had given him away.

A dozen phrases leaped to her tongue.

What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?

You lookin’ for me?

Now that you’ve caught me, whatever are you going to do with me?

If he possessed any sort of intellect and strength, the next few minutes would be a considerable challenge. She didn’t figure that witty banter, as great as it played out in old black-and-white movies, would serve much purpose in this situation.

She watched his head tilt slightly to the right as he studied her offensive pose. She gathered that he now comprehended her strategy was to fight. No doubt he took some time to reconcile that with the person who had run from him. He turned his head quickly in both directions to check the surroundings and assure himself that they were alone. Then he advanced cautiously.

It had been a while since she’d engaged in battle with an opponent but she wasn’t worried about forgetting how to do it. Fighting was all about physics. Force, speed, angles. Sabrina had always been a whiz at physics.

The man continued to approach, and he held his hands up as if to show he wasn’t carrying a weapon. Or possibly in a gesture of surrender. But if he was surrendering, then why was he still moving?

“Stop,” she commanded, wishing her voice sounded a little firmer. Unfortunately, she had a slight cold which made her sound more nasal than ominous.

“I just want to talk,” he replied even as he crept forward.

There was an eerie familiarity about his voice that Sabrina immediately recognized, but she couldn’t dwell on it. He was only eighty-one inches away. Just outside her long-legged reach.

Until he took another step closer.

“Talk to this,” she said, swinging her leg up and over in a roundhouse kick that she aimed toward his head. A second before her booted foot would have made contact with his jaw he pulled his body out of reach. And as her leg crossed his face he caught it in his hand with a grip that was too strong for her to break.

Balanced on one foot she knew that the slightest tug from him would send her to the ground. In cases like these, it was always best to get there on her own terms. Propelling herself off the ground with her other leg, she jumped and with her free foot aimed for his knee. Unable to avoid the blow while he still held her right leg, the man quickly released her, but not before she was able to make contact with enough force to send him stumbling back.

Together they fell. But knowing that’s where she was headed, Sabrina had the upper hand. She twisted her body and used her hands and feet to brace against the impact, essentially executing a prolonged push-up. Flipping over on to her backside, she did a kip-up, using the palms of her hands to bounce herself back onto the soles of her feet and into a standing position.

She watched the man favor his knee slightly as he, too, sprang to his feet in a fluid motion. Not even the long, dark overcoat he wore got in the way of the move.

“You want to play?” he asked, his voice a low snarl now.

“Not particularly,” she replied. “Hey, I know. How about you let me go?”

“Not until we talk.”

“Tell me who you are,” she insisted. The accent was American, not foreign, but it didn’t do as much as it could have to alleviate her fear. Kahsan could have easily sent someone within the country to get her. Possibly one of the sources inside the CIA Krueger had mentioned.

Not going to kidnap me, huh, Krueger? Thanks a lot!

The man remained stubbornly silent to her request.

“You don’t want to talk. I don’t want to talk. So where does that leave us?” she asked, lifting her hands, palms up. Hoping to catch him in a moment of surprise, she threw a side kick that made solid contact with his stomach. He barely reacted to it. Instead, he used the opportunity to throw a right hook at her jaw.

Sabrina felt the blow and was stunned by it. She hadn’t forgotten how to fight, but she remembered that the other part of fighting was learning how to take a hit. She quickly remembered it wasn’t any fun.

Blood gathered at the corner of her lip. She swiped it away with her tongue and backed away a step. Thinking he’d subdued her, he took a step forward only to be greeted by her own not-too-shabby left hook. His head turned at the impact, but he recovered faster and raised his hand again. This time she was quick enough to defend the punch with her forearm.

Three strikes, three counters. Sabrina struggled to fend off what she knew to be perfectly executed martial arts moves. There was a little of everything in his style, karate, jujitsu and kung fu. The man wasn’t picky. But he was getting frustrated. She could feel it in the increased speed of his attack. He managed to make contact with her cheek, which staggered her. Enough for her to lose concentration for a split second.

Suddenly, she felt his ankle whip around behind her right knee and pull. The force of it sent her stumbling backward on to her ass with her opponent looming over her. He reached for the lapels of her jacket and pulled her up to her feet so fast that she was unable to mount a counterattack with her legs. He thrust her back against the side of the building, pinning her to the brick wall with his weight.

“You always were a hellcat in a fight.”

Just then the moon broke free of a cloud and shot a burst of cool white light down on the man’s face. It had been a while, and he’d aged. The wrinkles were deeper around his eyes, there was a smattering of gray in his hair and his expression was harder, colder than she remembered it. But there was no mistaking him.

“Quinlan,” she breathed.

“In the flesh.”

“Put me down,” she ordered imperiously. She saw his lips twitch and he paused for a second, but eventually he lowered her to her feet.

Before he let her go, though, he had a condition. “You’ll talk to me?”

She nodded and released a breath signaling that the fight was over. He relaxed, too, and took a step back to let her come away from the wall. As soon as she was clear, she reached for his shoulders and slammed her knee into his groin. She watched him collapse helplessly to the ground.

He rolled onto his back and reached for his crotch, letting out a low pitiful wail.

Squatting down on her haunches near his head, Sabrina took a moment to enjoy the view of the mighty Quinlan on his back and writhing in pain. She’d imagined him in just such a position often over the past ten years. But somehow the reality of it was so much more special.

“Gosh, it’s been a long time,” she commented cheerily. “So how have you been?”

He moaned and rolled away from her, attempting to get to his knees but failing. Instead, he curled himself into the fetal position.

“That good, huh? Great. I’m doing really well myself. Good job prospect, nice house.”

“You’ll pay,” he finally managed to whisper.

“Well, it’s been fun catching up. We should do this again sometime.” She straightened herself to her full height and started to walk away, thinking she had at least a few minutes before he’d be able to regain his feet.

She’d kneed him pretty hard.

But one of her fatal weaknesses in life was that no matter what the situation, she always underestimated Quinlan.

She felt his hand around her ankle as she moved to take a step. She had the advantage of position, but she’d forgotten how strong he could be. He tugged hard on her leg and sent her tumbling. Unprepared for his speedy recovery, she wasn’t able to control her landing and ended up falling on her arm at a bad angle, her elbow smacking the pavement hard.

As she tried to breathe through the numbing pain, she felt him crawling up behind her using his weight to keep her down. She felt his knee press against the small of her back and gasped at the pressure he applied. Apparently, he wasn’t taking any chances of her escaping.

Either that or he was really ticked off.

He grabbed her wrists and pulled them behind her back, securing them with a thin piece of wire that she knew from experience he carried around with him like most men carried pictures of their kids. He wasn’t merciful as he pulled her to her feet and pushed her out in front of him.

“So help me, Bri, you pull another stunt like that and I’ll-”

“What? Hit me?” She turned around to face him so he could see the blood trickling from her lip. “Oooh. I’m scared.”

When they got to the end of the street he stopped her and signaled with his hand. A few blocks down, Sabrina could see a set of headlights blink to life. In moments the car pulled up in front of them-a dark Cadillac equipped with a driver.

“What, no limo?” Sabrina asked. “Those budget cuts must really be hell on you guys.”

“Get in.” He opened the rear door and Sabrina got in butt first, sliding over the red leather seat as she made room for who she now understood was Krueger’s choice. She checked the locks on the doors and saw that there weren’t any. No handles, either. It might not be a limo, but it was definitely government issue.

As soon as Quinlan shut the door, he gave the driver directions. “Her house. The long way.” He hit a button on a panel located on the arm of the car door. It raised a partition between the front and back half of the car. They were alone.

There was quiet for a time. Neither spoke as the impact of being in the same car together after so long apart settled on them. Quinlan, however, was the first to recover. He hit the car light on the roof and filled the back seat with a dim yellow glow.

Sabrina squinted at the light as her pupils adjusted. After a moment she turned to look at him only to find him staring back at her. He removed one of the black leather gloves he wore, and reached for her face to swipe away the blood.

She jerked her head back and snapped. “Don’t touch me.”

“It wasn’t my intention to be so rough with you,” he said, sounding regretful over their fight.

“It never is,” she replied.

Sighing, he removed his other glove and shoved them into his pockets. “Sabrina. Still angry after all these years?”

“Still an asshole after all these years?”

He didn’t bother to respond.

Impatient with his silence, she finally asked. “You? They sent you?”

“Me.”

“I never knew the government had such a sick sense of humor.”

“Hmm,” he murmured as a nonanswer. “You really thought they would send someone else? You really thought I would let them? That disappoints me, Bri. You used to be smarter than that.”

“I just figured you were too old for this sort of thing.”

She’d wanted to insult him, but the truth was he was right. She should have known who Krueger would send. Quinlan had been chasing Kahsan for most of his career. He was obsessed with the man and had been since the time he nearly caught him that one time in Africa. Instead he’d ended up with a nasty-looking scar over his left eye.

If she had to convince anyone to buck the system to go after Kahsan, Quinlan might be the candidate. But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

“Would you be surprised if I told you that I’ve missed you?” He turned his head toward her, his lips twitching ever so slightly. Quinlan’s version of a smile.

She snorted. “Yes. Because missing someone would actually imply that you have some capacity for emotion. And we both know that’s not true. Don’t we?”

Rather than answer, he faced forward again, his smile gone. “Your problem has always been an excess of emotion. An unfortunate circumstance for someone with a brain like yours.”

“That’s me,” she said sarcastically. “All heart. If only I could be an ice monster like you.”

“If only.”

Sabrina ground her teeth together and struggled to hold on to the last of her patience. “I’m tired. I hurt. My wrists are bleeding. My lip is swollen. You’re dropping me off at my house, and then you are gone. If Krueger thinks I can work with you, he’s deluding himself. I want someone else.”

The protest against his involvement was a pretense. Part of the play that had been scripted by Krueger. Quinlan would be expecting her to try and buck him, so she did. But it didn’t change the fact that what she said was true.

“No.”

Figures. Quinlan didn’t buck easily.

Okay, she said to him silently. You want to play? Game on.

“Look, there’s something you don’t know. There’s another part to this that makes it…complicated. Which means I don’t need any more complications on top of it and you are the mother of all complications.”

“Another part. Really?”

“Yes,” she hedged. “I sort of had this idea.”

“Do tell.”

She glanced over at him. There was something in his tone that wasn’t right. As though he was holding back…rage. She thought about what might enrage him, aside from the attack on his manhood, and came up with only one answer.

“You know,” she stated.

“That you contacted Kahsan? Hell, yes, I know,” he spat, pushing his face into hers. “I have people all over the world whose mission it is to keep me informed about Kahsan’s every breath. The only thing no one can ever tell me is where the hell he is. You can imagine my shock when rumors started circulating about some female genius trying to make contact with him. Then I hear about Arnold’s death, and I get word from my superiors that I’m to collect you and take you to his computer. Suddenly, it all makes a disgusting sort of sense.”

“No,” she said, sensing his anger over the betrayal. “You’ve got it wrong.”

“How much, Sabrina? I want to know. How much did you sell your soul to the devil for?”

It hurt. Ten years was a lifetime ago. There was no reason to think that any bond they might have shared then would have survived all this time and everything that had happened. Still, his instant distrust hurt more than anything he’d done to her physically. She barked out a humorless laugh in defense against the pain.

“Now you know that’s not possible, Q. How could I have possibly sold my soul to Kahsan when I sold it to you years ago?”

Chapter 4

Fourteen years ago

“Do you know why you’re here?”

Sabrina said nothing. She had this idea that she would play the role of the stoic prisoner being interrogated by the enemy. After all, that’s what she felt like. The prison in question might be some fancy office in Washington, D.C., but it didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t leave.

And that she didn’t want to be here.

She was tired of being tested. Tired of being pushed in directions that she didn’t want to go. First her father, then Harvard, now this. But the man sitting across from her didn’t seem like the typical geeky Martin-Lewis-professor type she was used to dealing with.

He seemed like a badass. It was in the eyes. Gray and cold. And the fresh scar that ran over his left eye. She was tempted to ask him if it was real, or if it was just for effect.

“I believe I asked you a question,” he said quietly.

“I believe you can go shove it up your ass,” she retorted in defiance of the quiver of intimidation she was feeling being in this man’s presence. So much for the silent stoic routine. Then again, she’d never been quiet when she had something to say.

The man who had been introduced as Quinlan nodded casually at her response, then reached across the desk that separated them and, in a lightning fast move, snatched the nose hoop that dangled from one of her nostrils. Thankfully, the catch came undone or else he would have ripped completely through her soft tissue.

Even with that small mercy, the pain was intense. She screeched and covered her nose with her hand. Then watched as he slid the thin gold loop over his finger. “You sonofab-”

“Your father said you were a young lady. Young ladies don’t use that kind of language.”

He handed her a tissue that he pulled from a drawer. She covered her nose with it and then instantly checked to see how much blood there was. It wasn’t much. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.

Scowling at him she tossed the tissue away. “Yeah, well, my father doesn’t really know me. In fact, I think I’ve grown a couple inches since the last time he looked up from his computer to see if I was still around.”

Quinlan studied her slouching body. “What are you, five-seven?”

“Five-seven and one-quarter inch.”

“You’re tall for your age and no doubt still growing,” he muttered as he made a few notes on a file that sat open in front of him. “Tell me, is that where your bitterness stems from? The fact that Daddy doesn’t pay enough attention to you.”

“Actually it comes from the fact that my mother abandoned me at the age of four,” Sabrina corrected him, then faked a few dramatic sobs. “I’ve never quite gotten over it.”

“Do you know what I see?”

“Like I care,” she replied, then closed her mouth. Her last smart-ass response had resulted in the loss of a nose ring. She didn’t want to think about what she might lose next. Instinctively, she reached for the three hoops that dangled from her right ear.

“I see a sixteen-year-old, immature brat who is too damn smart for her own good. But I’m going to fix that.”

“You can’t fix something that’s not broken.”

“Then I imagine we’ll have to break you. Let’s start over, shall we? Do you know why you’re here?”

“My father told me to come,” she spat at him, pretending that the idea of being broken didn’t scare her. “Can I have another tissue?” He pulled another single tissue from the drawer and handed it to her and waited while she blew her nose. “Out front the lady said your name was Quinlan. Is that Mr. Quinlan?”

“Just Quinlan.”

Sabrina rolled her eyes. “You mean like just Madonna?”

“Okay. Do you know why your father asked you to come here?”

“No,” she answered honestly. “Last I knew he wanted me to go to Harvard. Thought that I could give those guys all sorts of answers. Whatever. He had this vision of me working in an ivory tower developing theories and shit. How far does pi go? E equals mc cubed-”

“Squared.”

“Not the way I do it.” She smiled cockily. Then she remembered the hours upon hours of testing and her smile quickly diminished. “But they didn’t want any answers to any problems. They just wanted to test me. I was their freaking guinea pig.”

“And you didn’t like that.”

“I hated it,” she clarified. “School was never my thing. And pushy people asking me all sorts of questions…really not my thing.”

This actually elicited a small, very small, smile from the man across from her. Just to show her that he got her message, she imagined. But he said nothing. Instead he glanced down at the file in front of him again and read it for a time. Finally, he looked up and met her gaze. “Your father is considered a brilliant man. His work for the National Security Agency decrypting enemy codes has been invaluable to this country’s security.”

“That’s my dad.”

“Your IQ eclipses his.”

Sabrina said nothing.

“Your specialty is numbers. You test off the charts for spatial mathematics, but what is unusual in a case like yours-”

“I’m not Rain Man,” Sabrina finished. “I don’t even like Judge Wapner.”

“-is your computation ability,” Quinlan continued. “Not only can you interpret formulas but you can also apply them at high speeds. Which probably comes from your ability to hold several hundred numbers in your head at once. Your memory is extraordinary. Few people have a true photographic memory and those who do usually must concentrate on the thing they are attempting to remember. Snapping the picture in their mind so to speak. And there is only a limited time frame in which they can retrieve and recite the image or words that they’ve committed to memory. Your brain, however, seems to have a limitless capacity for…storage. You remember everything, don’t you?”

Sabrina squirmed in her chair. That’s what the geeks at Harvard had wanted to know. How much could she remember? How far back did it go? Test after boring test to questions that she didn’t see the point of knowing the answer to. “You’re making me sound like a freak.”

Not that she hadn’t known she was one since the age of three. She just hated to be reminded of it.

“Tell me. Can you remember the answers to the very first math test you ever took?”

It was addition. Four. Six. Five. Ten. Ten. The teacher thought she was being tricky by putting on the test two questions with two different sets of numbers that both added up to ten. Sabrina had been four at the time.

Quinlan nodded again, as if her silence was answer enough for him. “Sabrina, you are a freak. Learn to embrace it.” He closed the folder, stood up and made his way to the door.

“Wait,” she stopped him, sitting up in her chair. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to report my opinion of you to my superiors.”

She felt her gut tighten and wished like hell she didn’t care what that was. “For what? What’s this all about?”

“We call it our Youth Adoption Program.”

“We?

“The Central Intelligence Agency. We find gifted teens and start early with their training to become analysts or field operatives. Your father isn’t as completely out of touch with you as you like to think. He fears you’re not long for the ivory tower. And he thought this might be a challenging alternative for you and a way for you to still apply your unique gift for the greater good. Now I’m going to go tell my superiors if I think you’ll work.”

“And do you?” she asked as he opened the door, promising herself she didn’t care.

He didn’t turn around. But she heard him say, “I do.”

Present

“I want an answer. Talk to me,” he growled. “Now.”

“I’ll talk. Not here, though.”

Not that it really mattered where they were, but she liked the sense of control waiting gave her. He fell back against the seat, seemingly placated for the moment. She hoped that meant on some level he knew she wasn’t a traitor. Not because she cared what he thought, but because it would make her job easier. At least that’s what she told herself.

The driver stopped in front of her house. House, she mused. More like a work in progress. She could have bought a slick new condo. Instead she had instantly fallen in love with an old lady, a Queen Anne that needed a lot of care and a lot of money. But since it had only been the second time she’d ever fallen in love with anything, she thought that it meant something.

That was until she learned that her old lady needed a new roof, a new porch, a new heater and new windows. And that didn’t even begin to cover the work that needed to be done to her insides.

The bitch.

“You live here?” Quinlan asked.

Sabrina shot him a bored look since she knew he knew damn well that she did.

He got out and circled the car, opening the door for her. He made a move to reach for her arm since her hands were still secured behind her back, but she avoided his touch. He backed off and she managed to get out of the car under her own power.

“Why do you always have to be so stubborn?” he muttered under his breath.

“Where’s the challenge in being easy?” she returned. She started to walk up the cracked slate walkway when Quinlan stopped her with a heavy hand on her shoulder.

“Can I have your word you won’t try to unman me again?” he asked, his eyes falling to the wire pinning her wrists together.

Sabrina considered that for a moment. “Uh…nope.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to take my chances.” He unraveled the wire restraint, pocketed it, then followed her to a porch that had more than one section of a beam missing.

“Watch yourself,” she warned him. “Step where I step. I’m not sure that it will support your weight.”

She took a key out of her pocket and unlocked the door, stepping back to let him inside. In a way she was curious to see his reaction.

He said nothing moving from the foyer into the living room, but she could tell he was struck by the place. It had been ten years since the last time she saw him, but she could still read him. Not an easy thing to do with a guy whose favorite expression was neutral. But she could tell. The way he stopped and studied each piece like it was a surprise that it should be there.

For her, walking through the front door each day was like walking back a hundred years. All of the furniture was period, but in excellent condition. Hunted down in flea markets, auctions and estate sales across the East Coast. She’d chosen deep rich colors. Purples, plums and forest green. Naturally the wallpaper on the parlor walls was new, so were the velvet drapes, but they were meticulously matched to the style of the room.

Seeing the room through a man’s eyes, she thought about how feminine the space was. Not girly. It was much more sophisticated than that. And once again she found herself pleased with the result. This is what it was supposed to look like. She’d done right by the old lady…so far.

“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to a high-back chair near the fireplace. “Or better yet make yourself useful and build a fire. It’s always cold in here. Wood and stuff are in the closet behind you.”

“Where are you going?” he asked as she headed down a hall that led to the back of the house.

She held up her wrists that sported thin lines of blood thanks to him. “Just want to rinse off.”

“This house. It’s interesting,” he called out.

Sabrina stuck her hands under the faucet and winced when the water hit them. She let the icy water clean off the blood and then shook out her hands to make sure all the feeling had returned to them. Using a kitchen towel she dried off, then walked back to the living room to find Quinlan crouched by the fireplace. He was positioning the logs, making sure that they were evenly placed. Next he stuffed crumpled newspaper balls into strategic locations that would light the fire as quickly as possible.

So methodical. So precise. So like him.

“What do you mean? About the house?”

He lifted his head, clearly surprised to see her so close. “I wouldn’t have guessed that your tastes ran to the romantic.”

“Chalk it up to my ‘excess of emotion’ problem.” She reached for a pack of cigarettes she kept on the mantel above the fireplace. She offered him one and he scowled appropriately. He’d always had a thing against bad habits. Because she was feeling perverse, she lit one in spite of his disapproval, then handed him the pack of matches to light the newspaper.

The fire sufficiently started, he stood and slowly took in every element of the room. “You’ve put a lot of effort into it.”

“And money,” she admitted. “It’s a pit.” She fell back onto the couch, undoing her boots and letting them drop to the floor so she could tuck her feet up under her bottom.

“I heard about Vegas.”

He sat, as well, choosing the magenta love seat. Sabrina couldn’t help but appreciate how utterly masculine he looked despite the feminine color of the cushions. He’d removed his coat and the black turtleneck sweater and pants he wore clung to his frame, subtly emphasizing the muscles underneath without showcasing them. Not even the gun he wore, holstered under his arm, detracted from the look. In fact, it only made him appear more deadly. Like a panther had just gotten loose in her house. Maybe it had.

“And Atlantic City,” she added, although she was sure he knew that, too. “Booted out of both.”

“Didn’t take them long, did it?”

“No. But I had some success with a dark wig for a while. Long enough for me to get a stake. Enough to buy the house. Then there was a pretty successful trip to Monte Carlo. That helped pay the bills until I hit upon my new business.”

“I heard about the job. So what do you call yourself? A Hollywood gossip columnist?”

Her lips tilted upward. Poor Quinlan, he couldn’t quite hide his disdain even though he tried. “In some ways it’s a little like my old job at the CIA. After all, I’m acquiring information. Just like you.”

“Not quite.”

“You’re right. I sell my information to the highest bidder.” She watched his jaw tighten perceptibly at the mercenary nature of her career, but still he waited patiently. Standard operating procedure, she thought. Let the perp talk it out and get as much information as you can willingly. “You would be amazed at what the tabloids will pay for a little dirt on America’s elite.”

“Can I say I’m disappointed that this is what you chose to do with your talent?”

His disappointment. There was a day when those words might have destroyed her. And maybe that had been part of the problem. Her life ten years ago had been too much about not disappointing him, and not enough about doing the right thing simply because it was the right thing.

The greater good. That’s what her father told her, her life should be about. Right now it wasn’t. This was her opportunity to change that. But first she needed to get back in the game. She didn’t share this information with him, though, mostly because she doubted he would believe her. And partly because it irked her that he still felt that he had the right to comment on her life.

“Nope. You don’t get any say in what I do with my life or my talent.” And that kills you, doesn’t it? she finished silently.

“What about your father?”

“What about him?” she asked stiffly.

“I think he’d hoped you would return to the world of academia.”

Sabrina shook her head and took another drag on her cigarette. “School was never my thing. That was Dad’s dream. I never wanted any part of it.”

“Does he know what you do?”

She laughed and blew out a stream of smoke. “You mean the tabloids or the American traitor gig? Relax,” she said when she saw he didn’t appreciate her attempt at humor. “He doesn’t even know where I am. Still the same old dad. Can’t tear away from his monitor long enough to look.”

Quinlan nodded slightly and Sabrina could see he didn’t doubt her. He’d met Roger Masters enough times to know that she was exactly right in her assessment. “Maybe we should get back to the matter at hand. Krueger told me you and Arnold had been in contact. For how long?”

Finding herself agitated at the mention of Arnold because it still made her sad, Sabrina stood and walked over to smash out her cigarette in the ashtray positioned next to the pack on the mantel. “Just this past year. I don’t know how he found me, but he sent me an e-mail.”

This is your chance, G.G. It’s time to come home.

The words from that first e-mail ran through her brain. It had been that single word, home, that had made her reply. Then more words followed. Words like destiny. Promise and potential. For a numbers guy, Arnold had been pretty eloquent.

She felt the warmth of the fire hit her face and not for the first time wished she could talk to Arnold one more time.

“You loved him.”

Did she? She thought about the first time they’d met. In the hallowed halls of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Sixteen and full of herself and her brilliance, she’d been cocky as hell. She’d had no idea she was meeting an intellectual peer.

“So you’re her. The girl genius,” he said as introduction.

Certainly his appearance hadn’t been impressive. He had bushy white hair that made him look older than his fifty-five years. Sabrina remembered that day he had on a dismal yellow Oxford with monster pit stains underneath each arm. He had matched the shirt with a cheap green tie that fell, ridiculously uneven, down the front of his chubby body. She’d been repulsed and had immediately pegged him as a standard run-of-the-mill academic geek, which she’d grown to know so well during her days at Harvard.

“Quick, what’s the significance of the number three?”

“It’s between two and four.”

Arnold had laughed at her answer to his impromptu quiz. Cackled really.

“Excellent. Always start with the obvious. You’ll do, G.G. You’ll do fine.”

She glanced over at Quinlan, the memory making her smile. “I don’t know. Love is a pretty strong word. I did admire him. Not just his intellect, but his independence, too.”

“That independence is the reason we’re in trouble now. It was irresponsible of him to leave us blind like this. There hasn’t been much chatter over the wires lately, but that could change in a matter of days.”

“Don’t be mad at him,” she urged, seeing the etched lines of Quinlan’s face grow harder. For Arnold it was always about the work. For Quinlan it was always about duty to his country. The two men had liked each other, she recalled, respected each other certainly, but they never understood each other. “I think…I think part of the reason he did this was for me. You knew Arnold. He never cared much about the consequences, only as far as they pertained to his own agenda. This time I think that agenda was me. He wanted me to have a second chance.”

“And what do you want?”

Sabrina walked over to the stocked wet bar in the corner of the room and poured two whiskeys straight. She handed one to Quinlan, even though she doubted he would drink it, and sat down in the delicate chair across from him, closer to the fire. Closer to him.

“Do you think it’s so impossible that might be exactly what I want?”

“You could have come to me. Years ago. I could have fixed things.”

Sabrina laughed softly. “As if I would have asked you for anything back then. But I guess I know that if I had, you would have tried. You would have failed. I was fired, Q. And they were right to do it.”

“There were circumstances,” he muttered, his eyes pinned on the glass in his hands. He did, in fact, take a sip of his drink.

“Yep. But the broken heart of a nineteen-year-old seems pretty silly when you think about it in hindsight.”

“What happened?” he asked, wanting the specifics of why she did it, she knew. He would have read about how it happened in her file. But the details didn’t matter anymore, just the reason behind them.

“I got lost. You can’t know, can’t imagine, what it’s like to be ten paces in front of the rest of the world. It’s the scariest place on earth when you’re there by yourself, especially when you don’t know where you’re going.”

She lifted the glass to her lips. The smell of the whiskey hit her and reminded her that this would be her third drink of the night. She set the drink down on the end table next to her and stood again, moving back toward the fire. She looked at the flames colored with hints of blue and orange rather than at him.

“I decided I didn’t want to be that person, out in front, anymore. And it was so easy to give up. So easy to tell myself that I didn’t need the CIA. Too easy for them to say they didn’t need me. Then… I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was 9/11, maybe it was sooner. Somewhere along the way I grew up. I started to think about what I was doing with my life. What I was giving away. All my potential. That’s a hell of a thing. It began to piss me off. I was good at what I did. And I liked being good at it.”

“You could have been the best.”

She shrugged and tried not to think about what could have been, but what was going to be if she could pull this off.

“So there’s your answer. It’s ten years later. The past is just that. Arnold gave me an opportunity and I’m taking hold of it with both hands. Yes, I contacted Kahsan. I told him everything. Because you and I both know that he’s the only other person who would want access to Arnold’s data as much as the CIA. Don’t you see? I’ve become the ultimate bait and when I deliver his head on a platter to the CIA…they’ll have to take me back. On my terms. You know they will.”

She thought she sounded pretty convincing. Probably because most of what she’d told him was the truth. No, it hadn’t been her idea to go after Kahsan, but everything else she’d told him was dead-on.

“Possibly,” he accepted. “But this isn’t tiddledy-winks. You’ve been out of the game a long time, Bri. What makes you think you can play with this man?”

“I made you as a tail tonight,” she reminded him.

A short nod acknowledged her victory. “How did you make me? I thought I had been rather careful.”

“I heard your shoes.”

“So you leaped to the conclusion that any man walking on the sidewalk had to be following you. That’s awfully presumptuous even given the circumstances.”

“This is Stansfield, Pennsylvania. In the dead of winter,” she told him, “even the lawyers around this place wear boots.”

He lifted his gaze from his drink and met her eyes. In the light of the fire his normally cold gray eyes didn’t seem as dangerous as she remembered. Instead, they seemed almost inviting, as though he wanted her to share a memory with him. But that wasn’t a place she could go. Not with him. Not again.

He stood and set his half-finished drink on the mantel as far away from her ashtray as possible. “Your fighting was a little sloppy,” he mentioned. “And you were breathing hard after the chase. You’re out of shape. Could be the cigarettes.”

“Yeah, well, you weren’t exactly operating at top speed, either, chief. Could be your age.”

“Okay. For now I’ll buy your story. But this changes everything. I have to tell my superiors what you’ve done. I have no idea how they’ll react. But in the meantime you’re stuck with me. If Kahsan does bite-”

“If? I would say it was more a question of when.”

A snap of wood echoed from outside almost in response to Sabrina’s statement. It was a simple sound. The sound a cold, near frozen, branch makes when the wind hits a tree too hard.

Or the sound a heavy foot makes when it steps on a board that can’t support its weight.

Inside the house they froze, then stared hard at each other, no communication necessary for what they both understood.

They had company.

Chapter 5

“Who?” Sabrina mouthed.

Quinlan’s expression was severe. “Who do you think?”

But that didn’t make sense. If it was Kahsan and he was moving on her, why do it now when there were two of them?

“No. It doesn’t work,” Sabrina whispered, shaking her head. “Besides, whoever is out there is making too much noise to be anything but hired help.”

Quinlan held a finger to his mouth, the universal sign to shut up. Quiet descended. Then another creak. This time the sound of pressure on wood rather than an actual snap. Sabrina was even more convinced. Whoever was outside was trying to be more careful, but they weren’t quite cutting it. One more step and the board cracked. The noise was unmistakable. As was the surprised shout that followed. Whoever he was, he knew that stealth was no longer an option.

Instantly, Quinlan reached for his semiautomatic Glock in the holster under his arm. He moved to the corner of the living room dragging Sabrina with him. His body pressed her back against the wall between the front door and the bay window to their right as they waited.

The first shot that fired through the window wasn’t a surprise. Then came another. Then all hell broke loose. Together they crouched to their knees tucked as tightly as they could in the corner of the room, their bodies hopefully sheltered by the sturdy beams of the old house, while someone took aim at them from outside with what could only be an AK-47.

Glass shattered inside the room as bullets ricocheted off the brick fireplace. From the foyer she could hear the glass surrounding the front door falling in chunks to the hardwood floor.

“Damn it,” she cursed.

“You hit?”

“No. I used stained glass around the front door. Do you know how much that costs?”

“How many shooters?” he asked.

Sabrina counted the bullets leaving marks in her living-room wall. Then she estimated what was landing in the foyer. Applying that to what she knew a semiautomatic rifle could hold, she answered, “Two shooters, far enough away that I’m probably not counting the guy from the porch.” She shook her head. “This doesn’t make sense.”

“You asked for this,” he growled even as he covered her face with his arm to protect her from the flying glass.

“No, he can’t want me dead. I’m the only one who can get him what he needs.”

“Fine, then he’s trying to take me out. Regardless, we’ve got trouble.”

But that didn’t make sense, either, she thought, even as the bullets were zinging over their heads. She’d made it clear she didn’t know the location of Arnold’s computer. What good did it do Kahsan to take out the agent making contact until he was sure she knew where they were going? Something else was at play.

“We need to get out of here,” Quinlan concluded as glass continued to pepper them.

“Definitely. The driver?”

“He’ll stay in the car. It’s bulletproof.” Reaching for the Nextel two-way phone that he kept attached to his belt at all times, Quinlan hit a button. “Horner. Horner.”

There was a small pause before he heard an answer. “Where?”

“Around back. Pull the car up as close as you can.”

“There’s a raised deck out back,” Sabrina told him.

“How many feet wide?”

“Seven and three quarters. That’s as close as he’ll be able to get.” She knew he was considering that it was a long way to run uncovered with only one gun to return fire against two AK-47s.

“We’re going to need another gun,” she said, telling him what he already knew. Her gun was upstairs. “Cover me, then get to the kitchen.”

“Sabrina,” he shouted.

She didn’t wait for whatever reprimands were sure to follow, but instead charged for the stairs that led to the second floor. She heard the sound of his return fire, which temporarily halted the barrage of flying steel.

Glancing behind her she could see the pinholes of light breaking through her front door and the glass surrounding it. Thirty-seven, she counted automatically. All of them above the level of the doorknob. Structurally there was nothing left to the door. A swift kick would knock it down.

Then she turned her head forward and continued up the stairs in a stooped position. No looking back in a gunfight. Keep your eyes on the place you need to get to and get to it. How many times had Quinlan told her that?

Turning the corner on the second floor she raced for her bedroom, keeping her head low and found what she needed in the drawer of her nightstand.

Wrapping her hand around the compact silver Colt 45 Defender, she sighed with relief. With a gun in her hand, there was at least a chance. Moving forward she winced as a piece of glass she’d picked up from downstairs pinched through her sock. Acting quickly, she shucked both socks and fished out her rarely used jogging sneakers that she habitually kept under her bed. Shoving her feet into them, laces untied, she moved out of the bedroom. The tempo of the bullets was picking up again.

Once more her fast brain tried to decipher what this meant. Killing her made no sense. None. Without her, the data that Kahsan wanted would be lost. And why the heavy-handed approach? Why not fucking knock first?

Rather than head down the staircase, Sabrina moved around the second-floor landing to the room that had served as the laundry room. There was another flight of stairs that led to the kitchen and from there she and Quinlan could exit the back of the house where the driver hopefully was waiting.

She didn’t have to wonder if Quinlan would be there. His goal was the same as hers. Trading fire would get him nothing. Racing down the stairs, she stopped at the archway opening to the kitchen. Quiet. Reloading? Or maybe they were repositioning themselves.

“Sabrina.”

She immediately spotted him in the darkened room situated behind the open refrigerator door. He’d taken out the overhead light in the room with a single shot rather than try to find the switch. He’d even broken the light inside the refrigerator. Thorough, she thought. That was something she’d never forgotten about him.

Diving, she rolled her body on the ground in a somersault. By the time she was on her feet again, she was behind him, the cool air of the refrigerator hitting her back. She positioned her gun over his shoulder, aiming it at the half-glass storm door that led to the back deck.

He turned his head and noted the gun. “Still love American guns.”

“They really are the best bang for the buck. No pun intended.” A few seconds passed as they assessed their next move. Sabrina wondered at the sudden quiet.

“They know where the car is,” Quinlan stated. “They know there is only one exit.”

“There is always more than one exit,” she corrected him as a better idea came to her. “You taught me that.”

He glanced back over his shoulder at her. “Where?”

“Upstairs. Follow me.”

She led him back up the secondary staircase through the abandoned laundry room and toward one of the rooms that overlooked the deck. The room was empty except for some paint cans. The window was unadorned-no curtains or blinds to use as a shield. Looking out, which they would need to do in order to determine where the shooters were, would be a risk.

Quinlan moved forward, but Sabrina held him back with a hand on his arm. “No, let me.”

She crawled to the window and raised her head slowly, giving her eyes just enough space to see. The moonlight sufficiently illuminated what was her backyard. She could see the black Cadillac patiently waiting on top of what used to be her hydrangea bushes.

She also spotted two shooters. One pressed against the side of the house, about seven feet from the porch. The tip of his rifle was raised skyward. The other had moved around a tree at the edge of the yard, directly facing the back door. His weapon, also, was raised and resting against his shoulder. Awfully relaxed, she thought for two guys waiting to pick off whoever walked out the back door.

Sabrina lowered herself and turned so that her back was against the wall, her head safely beneath the windowpane. “Two shooters repositioned around back with clear shots at the car.”

“That means there is definitely a third,” Quinlan concluded.

“Watching the front,” Sabrina concurred.

“Any chance we can pick them off from here?”

She shook her head. “All I can see are the tips of the guns. There is no clear shot.”

“Maybe the neighbors heard and called…”

“Too far away,” she interrupted, knowing what he was thinking. “I’m pretty isolated from the residential part of town. The closest buildings are businesses and they’re closed. I doubt anyone heard the shots. And no way is the sheriff capable of handling whoever is outside. I don’t want him involved. What about you? How fast can you get backup?”

“Not fast enough. They’ll never wait that long. We’ve got minutes before they figure out we’re not stupid enough to try for the car and they move inside.”

“So we wait them out. Try to take them out once they are inside the house.”

He nodded. “It’s our best chance, but not a great one considering what they’re carrying and that they outnumber us.”

Sabrina turned and once more slowly lifted her head checking to see that she was right before she suggested an alternative. She was.

“The roof outside this window slopes down over the deck at least five feet. From there it wouldn’t be too far to jump to hit the roof of the car.”

“Too much opportunity to hear us. The window opening, us on the roof,” he said dismissively.

“Listen to me, those guys aren’t waiting for us to come out the back door. They don’t even have their rifles trained on the house. Did you see the front door?”

“Everything high.”

Sabrina nodded. “Usually when shots get fired people have a tendency to duck. I’m telling you they’re not here to take me out. Something else is going on. We get the window open, slide down the roof, maybe end up in a position to take out the guy behind the tree. I’m guessing they won’t risk firing at us when we’re so exposed.”

“You guess?” he repeated, evidently not pleased with the idea of risking his life on a hunch.

“I know.”

His eyes, like laser beams pinned her to her spot, searching, she knew, for the girl she once was. Searching for the truth. He must have found what he was looking for.

“Okay. You win. We’ll do it your way.”

He slid across the floor to her position, and together they pushed the window up as gently and as slowly as possible. The sound of the wood scraping against the pane was unmistakable, but it was hard to know how far it would carry. The window raised enough for them to slide through the opening, they shrank down and waited to see if they had signaled their position.

Silence.

“Let’s move,” Sabrina said. “Me first.”

If the shooters did spot movement, and she was right about them not wanting to actually kill her-a really big if-then they would have to hold their fire until they verified the identity of the person on the roof. That should give her and Quinlan more than enough time to get to the car. If she was wrong, then Quinlan would still have a chance.

“Horner. Get ready. Unlock the back doors.”

Sabrina contemplated what it meant for him to trust her like this. Especially, since she knew part of the reason he was here was because he didn’t. But the time for thinking was over.

Like a snake, she slipped out over the edge of the window. With her Colt in her right hand, she used her left hand to control her landing as she pressed her body flat against the slate roof. She knew from her contractor’s assessment that several of the slates were loose, contributing to her leaking problem. This would only add to the challenge of trying to descend silently. Using hands and knees, she carefully positioned herself on each slate checking for movement. When it remained stationary, she moved to the next one. Then the next.

Behind her, she knew Quinlan was following her onto the roof. He was quiet, but the sound of his gun clicking against the slate gave him up. Lifting her head slightly, she checked the position of the shooter behind the tree. The gun was no longer pointed in the air, but his sight was focused on the back door, not at her. And his shoulder was exposed.

Sabrina glanced back at Quinlan, whose head was now level with her waist. With hand signals, she pointed out the position of the shooters. Then tapped her shoulder and pointed again to let him know she had a shot.

She could feel the intensity of his gaze on her, wondering, worrying, she knew, if she was still as skilled with a gun. He had no choice but to trust her. Taking out one of the gunmen meant that by the time the other one reacted to the sound of the blast, she and Quinlan would be on the car roof and might have a clean shot at the guy.

She tapped her shoulder again and nodded. After a brief second, Quinlan returned her nod.

Learning how to fight hand-to-hand combat all those years ago had been hell. It had been painful, gut-wrenching work struggling to teach her muscles how to react to her mind’s command. She’d been beaten, bruised and sore for almost a year.

Learning how to shoot, however…that had been easy.

She took aim, calculated the distance in her mind between herself and the target, determined the angle of her position relative to his, focused on the exposed shoulder and squeezed the trigger.

The blast was instantly followed by her target going down with a painful yelp. Silence no longer an issue, she leaped to her feet and heard the sound of slate shifting behind her signaling that Quinlan was moving, too. Together they scrambled to the edge of the roof and jumped, falling the five feet onto the roof of the car. Quinlan started firing midair at the second gunman. In the absence of return fire, Sabrina had to assume he’d hit his target.

She landed on the car top hard, her knees absorbing the shock, but she didn’t waste time before jumping to the ground. She opened the back car door and dived inside. Quinlan was already in, coming from the opposite side.

“You get him?” she asked as soon as both doors were closed.

“Don’t know. Couldn’t tell. Go, go,” he instructed the driver.

The Cadillac lurched forward, thrusting them back against the seat. Over the bushes, then around the house, the tires spun along the grass digging up dirt. The car bounced onto the paved road and sped away from the house.

“No one’s shooting,” she said, although that was pretty evident. “What happened to the third guy?”

“I don’t know. He must have held his position out front. This is crazy. What the hell was the point of that?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Yeah, well, work on this,” he said. “I’m pretty sure your grand plan was successful. Congratulations. You’ve now got the most dangerous man on the planet on your tail.”

Yikes.

Sabrina forced herself not to gulp, but instead bravely said, “I can take him.”

Quinlan didn’t comment. He didn’t have to. Even she knew that she had no idea if that was true or not.

Chapter 6

Thirteen years ago

“What are you doing? Sabrina. This is weak. You don’t work for the FBI. Sloppy. Very sloppy.”

She raised her arm again in an attacking motion that Quinlan easily deflected.

“You’re too slow. And you’re too predictable.”

It was times like these that she believed she truly hated him. She knew he could feel her trying harder to move faster. She also knew that he was well aware of what it cost her physically. The greater her momentum during the attack, the more painful it was when she made contact.

For five months, she’d been fighting him every day as part of her training. Her arms were nothing more than a patchwork of bruises held together by skin. When she showed him her initial bruises after the first day, he’d shrugged and told her to get used to it. That was a harbinger of things to come-both the pain and his attitude toward her suffering. But still she kept coming back for more.

She supposed she might have considered quitting, if it wasn’t for the fact that she felt as if she was exactly where she belonged. Never had she felt so satisfied with her life. So productive. So sure she was on the right path finally. At Harvard they had only wanted to test her, but here she was part of the process. It was an exhilarating difference.

No, the bruises didn’t hurt as much as leaving would. Not even close. Sabrina bet Quinlan knew that.

Alternating between left and right jabs, she thought she could take the focus off her now throbbing arms by mixing it up with a roundhouse kick. Her leg circled over her body in a smooth arch, which he blocked easily with his knee.

Oh yeah, she definitely hated him.

“You looked down at your knee before you raised your leg. That was a mistake. Why?”

She was panting now and struggling to keep up her speed. Seamlessly, he switched from defense to offense, changing the position of his attack until she was forced to take several steps back to avoid the onslaught of quick, perfectly executed punches that were coming dangerously close to her face.

“I asked you a question, Sabrina,” he pushed.

And she knew that giving him an answer was important. It was part of the training. The purpose was to work her mind as well as her body. If she was going to be a field operative, fighting was something she was going to have to learn to put on autopilot in order to free her mind to evaluate the situation around her. Her mind was capable of doing that. Her body, however, was not.

To distract him she shifted back to an offensive stance. Her arms followed a series of coordinated moves she’d committed to memory. Learning those moves had been simple. After reading a manual once, she knew where her hands were supposed to be, how straight her back needed to be, and how her feet should be situated on the ground before each strike. It was getting her body to perform what her brain already knew, that was the trick.

She was getting better, though. She knew that, despite Quinlan’s harsh commentary. He must have sensed it or seen it in her execution. Because now he wanted more from her than just a fight. He wanted her to stop thinking about the fight so she could concentrate on other things. She got the point, but as soon as she stopped focusing on where her forearm needed to be to protect her head, he struck.

It was a particularly heavy blow to the side of her head. Graciously, he gave her a second to shake it off. Sabrina didn’t have to be told that the enemy would never be so kind. It was Quinlan’s subtle way of telling her that she failed. The more obvious way would have been to actually hit her again.

“Answer me,” he insisted between breaths, referring to his previous question.

Now that they stopped maneuvers, it was easy to answer him. “Two problems resulted by switching the attack to my leg. I signaled my intent by looking down and I took my eyes off my opponent,” she panted.

Rubbing her forearm across her head, she tried to remove some of the sweat that was raining down her face. Dressed only in a sports bra and loose cotton pants, she didn’t have a whole lot of options. There were towels on the bench, but they were off the mat, and she couldn’t leave the mat until he told her she could leave. That was a rule. He had at least a score of them. He was a rules freak. But she was getting used to it. It was part of his method.

Next time, Sabrina promised herself, she wouldn’t look at her leg. Next time she would plant her bare foot against his cheek and smile when it happened. Lifting her head, she took a moment to study him. He was dressed in a black T-shirt and the same loose cotton pants she wore, only his were black. His shirt was hardly damp. Under the arms only. And he was breathing steadily but not deeply. As if he was barely exerting himself.

The bastard.

Then he nodded his head. Just once. It was a silent communication between the two of them that she’d come to understand. It meant he was satisfied she’d learned the lesson and wouldn’t repeat the mistake.

To date, she’d never made the same mistake twice. Over a hundred of them once, but never one twice. She believed it was one of the reasons that he was still around, still working with her when he probably should have been back on active duty. But she didn’t know that for sure.

“Why are you still here?” The question popped out before she could stop herself. She hadn’t wanted to ask, because she knew it wasn’t likely that he would answer. More than that, she didn’t want him to think that it mattered to her.

“I’m sorry?”

“How come you’re still here? At Langley. With me. Why aren’t you off saving the world? That is what you do, isn’t it?”

“I work for the United States government. I do what it asks,” he explained simply. “Right now it’s asking me to do this.”

This. Her. “I’m a person, not an assignment,” she protested, now completely annoyed with herself for bringing the subject up. It wasn’t that she thought they had any kind of bond or anything. She knew she was only a job to him.

And it wasn’t his fault if she’d let him become more than that to her. Which she had. Quinlan was much more to her than an evil trainer inflicting physical punishment. More than a teacher and a rule maker. In a very short time, he’d become her center.

Because he got her.

Nobody ever got her before. Not her mother before she took off, or her father, who could never deal with the fact that she was smarter than him. She hadn’t had a whole lot of friends because she’d been labeled weird, almost from the start. And she’d never met a teacher who hadn’t hated her on sight. Of course that could have had more to do with her condescending attitude than her gift.

Quinlan was different. He didn’t treat her as if she was strange. He expected her to be as smart as she was. Insisted upon it. Nobody had ever done that before. Nobody had ever pushed her to see how far she could go. At least nobody who she ever respected. He made her believe there was a reason why she was the way she was. And that she had an obligation, a duty, to use her capabilities to their fullest extent.

“Again,” he said, ignoring her protest about not being an assignment. He moved into position and fixed his eyes on hers.

For a quick second her breath caught in her throat. It had been happening lately whenever he looked a little too deep, or stared at her a little too long. As if he was seeing something inside of her that she didn’t even know was there.

She didn’t like it. She didn’t hate it, but she definitely didn’t like it. It made her…edgy.

“Breathe,” he instructed.

Since she’d been holding it in, the reminder proved to be beneficial. He’d taught her to use the opportunities during a fight to inhale deeply whenever she could. Oxygen meant life. Always.

Sabrina straightened her back to what she knew was textbook-perfect posture. And like a textbook, she executed the move with exact precision. It was never her technique, but rather her speed and often her lack of commitment that made the strike so easy to deflect.

“Still sloppy. And too slow.” Her palm glanced off his shoulder and she cursed. It was purely to be mean, she decided, that he felt obliged to add, “And you hit like a girl.”

This, of course, made her mad, which could have been his intent. It was hard to know. Nevertheless, she began to charge with more energy, but as she did, she could feel her precision dissipate until it became even easier for him to redirect her fists. In a single move, he wrapped his ankle around the back of her knee and tugged, sending her to the cushioned mat with enough force to knock the breath out of her.

When she tried to get up, he motioned for her to stay down with a simple hand gesture and instead, crouched down next to her head, resting on his haunches while she sucked in a few quick breaths. “Sometimes when people get pissed off, they fight better.”

“Like Rocky,” she wheezed as she sat up.

“Like Rocky,” Quinlan agreed with an actual smile. “But you don’t.”

She gave him a disgusted look to let him know that she’d already figured that part out. Standing to his full height, he stretched out his hand to her and helped her to her feet.

“You’re going to have to learn how to discipline your emotions. And you need to work harder on your own time. Repetition is the key.”

“Can’t you just teach me how to shoot a gun?”

“Your mind is your first weapon. Your body is your second. Guns, knives, those will come later. We’re done for today.”

“If you say so,” she muttered heading over to the side of the gym where her water and towel waited. Together they sat on the bench in companionable silence and drank deeply from their water bottles.

Sabrina could smell the lingering essence of sweat in the empty gym. Mostly from her, but some from him. On some level it disturbed her that he could smell her. Enough so that she found it necessary to scoot down the bench a little.

“When’s your next class?” he asked.

She checked the clock on the wall of the gym. “I’ve got time. I’m going to need a shower. I stink.”

“You do,” he agreed, wrapping his own towel around his neck.

“Yeah, well, you’re no rose, either.”

He didn’t comment.

“So do you hate it?” she blurted, still trying to get something from him, although she couldn’t say what that intangible thing was or why it was so important to her. But she figured he had to hate being stuck teaching a teenage girl how to fight. “I mean being here with me,” she clarified when he only raised his brows, “instead of out there in the field.”

“No.”

Sabrina waited, but that was apparently all he was going to offer.

“Were you good?” She bet he was. She bet he was very good.

“I still am,” he said.

“Right,” she agreed quickly. “I mean it’s not like you’re retired or anything. You’re not that old.”

She could see him wince at that comment and smiled because that had been her intent.

“How old are you? Thirty-something, right?”

“Close enough. Why all the questions?”

“We’ve been doing this for months. You know everything there is to know about me. I can’t even get you to tell me if Quinlan is your first or last name. I want to know your story. Did you mess something up? Are you being punished?”

“You think working with you is a punishment?”

She’d been told as much. On more than one occasion. But this wasn’t a sympathy exploration. All she really wanted was to find out about him. His past. His future. His scar, how it got there, and if that was the reason he’d been stuck working with her for so long. And most importantly, how long it would be before he left.

“Most people seem to think so,” she replied. “I’m not exactly easy. Ask my Arabic teacher.”

“Where’s the fun in easy?”

She smiled because it was an answer she understood. And he made her believe that he understood it, too.

“Seriously,” she pressed. “Why me?”

For a while he said nothing. Only the clock, sounding particularly loud in the quiet gym, made any noise. This was a time when an adult might have said something to ease the tension to let another adult off the hook. She had only just turned seventeen. Not adult enough.

She only lasted a minute before she proposed, “Maybe it’s because I’m difficult. Maybe they think you’re the only one who can handle me.”

He turned his head and she could see his brow furrow. Then he shook his head softly. “I’m here because I needed to heal,” he finally admitted, pointing to the red mark over his eye. “Don’t ever get the impression that you’re too special, Sabrina. Trust me when I tell you that you’re not.”

“Yo,” she moaned, clutching at her breast with her hand in a show of mock pain. “Ouch.”

His lips twitched and he leaned his head against the wall behind him. “You’re right. You’re not easy. I suppose there are some handlers who might think it’s not worth the effort.”

“This is the part when you tell me you’re different from the other handlers,” she replied cheekily for the pure challenge of eliciting another smile.

But just in case he said something else, she wrapped the towel that had been around her neck, around her shoulders so that it covered her barely clad body.

“You’re late for class.” It was the only thing he said before he stood and walked away.

Chapter 7

Present

Sabrina shifted herself more comfortably in the back seat of the Cadillac and tried not to think about who was coming for her and how close he really was. This was what she’d asked for after all, what she wanted. But with the adrenaline pumping heavy in her body and her heart still racing from the gunfight, it was suddenly hard to remember why her return to the agency was so important.

It was. She supposed that was enough.

Her Defender was still in her hand and with no real place to put it, Sabrina left it on the ledge behind the seat. It occurred to her that she was cold and with good reason. No socks and no coat.

Glancing over at Quinlan, she noticed that he’d managed to grab his dark overcoat during the melee. Typical. He’d have taken it as protection against a gunshot or flying glass. He’d have taken it in case they had to make a run for it on foot, knowing the temperature was below freezing. A hail of bullets pelting the house and he’d been calm enough and logical enough to put his coat on because it was the sensible thing to do.

And here she thought she’d been whizbang for grabbing her sneakers.

There was a panel on the back seat of the upscale vehicle for climate control and Sabrina leaned forward to jack up the heat to seventy-eight degrees. Hot air rushed out of the vents and the sudden change in temperature caused her to shiver.

“You should have thought to grab a coat or sweater.”

“Thanks,” she snapped even as she rubbed her hands over her arms. The sweater she had on was pretty heavy and as soon as the hot air filled the car she would be fine.

“If you think I’m going to give you mine-”

“I don’t think that,” she said, stopping him. There was nothing particularly gallant about Quinlan, certainly not when it came to business.

“Talk to me. Explain to me again what that was back there.”

She wished she knew for certain. “They weren’t trying to kill me.” Best to start with the obvious. The shots had been high and random. The shooters out back had been trying to prevent an escape rather than performing an execution.

“You contacted Kahsan,” he accused her. “You all but dared him to come and get you.”

“Yes, but getting me before I know the location of the computer gets him nothing. Taking you out, before he’s sure you’ve told me what I need to know gets him nothing. Think about it.”

“I am. You can’t possibly know what his motives are. All I know is that you called up the most dangerous man in the world and invited him to play in your fucking backyard.”

Sabrina considered telling him the truth. That it hadn’t been her idea at all, but rather his own people who had come up with this brainstorm. She stopped herself. Not so much because she cared about keeping Krueger’s secret, but because she doubted that Quinlan would believe her now.

“I told you why I did it. I want back in. I want a chance to make a difference again.”

“Spare me,” he said dismissively. “Your sudden patriotism, while touching, isn’t quite as convincing as I’m sure you would like. I want to know exactly what you told Kahsan.”

“I told him about Arnold’s project. About his death. And how it was going to be a big fat race to see who got to his computer first. But no matter how fast anyone got there, nobody was getting anything without me. Naturally, I explained that the cost to use my brain as a key would be high. Very, very high.”

He shook his head in evident disbelief. “How did you even know how to get in touch with him? It’s not like he’s listed in the phone book.”

“I knew the right Web sites to gain access to, the right message boards to post on. I haven’t been completely out of the game for the past ten years. Keeping track of the bad guys sort of became a hobby over time. That and hacking federal agency servers. You guys would be surprised to know how staggeringly vulnerable you are-”

“Focus,” he ordered. “I want details regarding the actual contact. Did you speak to him?”

She shook her head. “Our only contact was through e-mail and message boards. But I told him that if he wanted to deal, he had to come himself. And that he better bring a boatful of money. He thinks I’m a mercenary, and every background check he does is going to confirm that.”

“Right. A mercenary.”

Sabrina closed her eyes and struggled for patience. His distrust hurt, that was undeniable, but it was also frustrating. Especially since she thought she was lying really well.

“Look, all I ever did was suck at a job. Okay? I never gave away state secrets. I never compromised a mission’s security. I chose not to break a few codes because I was a kid and I was mad as hell. That’s no reason to believe I’ve gone Benedict Arnold.”

He sighed and leaned his head back against the seat. With the soft light of the waning moon filtering through the tinted windows, she could see him clearly. The creases around his mouth seemed even more evident. Ten years, and it didn’t look as though one of them had been easy on him.

“You don’t know,” he said softly. “No, you didn’t commit any crime against your country, but you’ll never know what you could have done to protect it. You’ll never know what it cost, how many lives lost, how many secrets lost, because you weren’t doing what you were born to do.”

Born to do. No pressure there. But now wasn’t the time to rise to the bait and argue with him over the merits of free choice. “You’re right,” she acquiesced. “I won’t ever know. And neither will you. But I’m here now. And I want to help.”

“Some help.” He snorted and held his arm out in front of him. She could see a beam of light through the bullet-size hole in his coat. She could also see the bubble of something wet that was about to drip from the material.

“Jesus, you’re shot.”

She reached for him and pushed the sleeve of his coat up his arm. It gave just enough to bunch the material over his elbow.

“It’s nothing. A graze.”

He was right. His sweater was torn and through the opening she could see a gash on his forearm that was bleeding steadily but not profusely.

“You got a first aid kit?”

He moved her back to her side of the seat and lowered the console between them. Lifting open the top, he extracted a small white kit. “Do you remember how to dress a wound?”

She smirked at him and his lips twitched in return. “Sorry.”

Sabrina opened the kit and found a tightly wrapped package of gauze and some pretreated wipes. She cleaned the wound, then wrapped it up tight with the cotton strips, tying off the ends exactly as she’d once been shown.

He flexed his arm once and nodded with satisfaction. “Let’s assume those men were Kahsan’s. Do you think it’s a coincidence that they showed up on the same night I did?”

Replacing the kit, she closed the console, but didn’t lift it back into place. It was silly but she felt more comfortable with the barrier between them. It made things clearer in her mind. He was on his side. She was on hers.

She did however turn toward him, her expression no doubt disdainful. “Still testing me?”

“It was a question.”

“Of course it wasn’t a coincidence. Very few things in life are. They must have been watching me. Waiting for someone to make contact before they moved.”

“Why?”

She knew that he was merely asking for the possibilities. “I made sure that Kahsan knew that I needed information from someone at the CIA. All that smoke with no real fire just delayed us. What if that’s all they wanted to do? To keep us pinned in the house another day. And the only reason they would need to do that is if…”

They looked at each other and she saw the same conclusion she had reached in his face.

“He really is coming,” Quinlan finished. His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. “I can’t believe he’d risk it. His face is on a hundred watch lists. He even attempts to get through an airport and we’ve got him.”

“He’ll come by boat, on some cargo ship,” she surmised. “Where our security is most vulnerable.”

“Maybe,” Quinlan agreed. “There’s no other explanation. It’s all in the timing.”

Sabrina nodded. “He knows I have to make it look like I’m cooperating with you. If you take me to Arnold’s computer there is only so much time I can waste pretending to hack into it. So he has to delay us getting to the computer until he’s in a position to make his move. Depending on where he’s coming from, that could take weeks.”

“They couldn’t have kept us in the house for weeks,” he muttered, obviously still piecing it together.

“You think he’s already here, in the country?”

“I don’t know how it’s possible. I truly don’t. But yeah, I think we have to consider it.”

Sabrina nodded. “Then this is good. This is what we wanted.”

“No,” he stated quickly, again turning his head toward her, letting her see his annoyance. “This is not what we wanted. What the CIA wanted was for you to bypass Arnold’s security, decipher his code and find the bad guys we’ve already let into the country. This was reckless.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s a little like the pot calling the kettle black. Whose decision was it to let terrorists in the country in the first place? Not mine. Besides, if the government was really serious about finding these guys, they wouldn’t have waited days after Arnold’s death to contact me. No doubt they spent that time letting some government geek-head try to break Arnold’s code. You didn’t really think that was going to happen, did you?”

“No. I didn’t,” he stated. “But that’s not what caused the delay. They were waiting for me. You think you’re the only one who can break Arnold’s encryption code. The CIA still thinks I’m the only one who can handle you.”

“I don’t need to be handled,” Sabrina said softly.

“It doesn’t matter what you think. Kahsan is close. And maybe, just maybe we actually have a chance to get him. We’ve got to get back to D.C. as soon as possible so I can begin planning.”

“Does he know where he’s going?” she asked, jerking her chin toward the front seat. The partition between the two seats had been raised most of the way revealing only a portion of his head.

“He does.”

The heat had finally kicked in making the back seat almost uncomfortably warm. She pushed the thermostat down a few degrees and closed her eyes in an attempt to feign rest. She didn’t know what time it was-close to five in the morning, she guessed. That time when night just began to break and the sky hinted of a sunrise to come. It occurred to her how tired she should be, a few drinks, several rounds of poker, a hand-to-hand fight, a reunion she wasn’t expecting, all followed up with a gunfight.

It had been a hell of a long night. But she wasn’t tired and knew that it was doubtful she could achieve real sleep with Quinlan only a foot away. Still, maybe if he thought she was sleeping, he would be content to let the silence linger. Although he had never had a problem with silence. She had always been the one to break it.

Not this time, though. “You handled that situation back there well,” he told her.

“Guess shooting at people is a lot like riding a bike,” she retorted. She sounded casual but now that the adrenaline wasn’t flowing as hard there was a lingering nausea in her gut. She considered the possibility that she might have killed someone back at the house. Regardless that the someone was, in fact, the enemy…it still made her queasy.

“I meant your accuracy with the gun. You’ve been practicing,” Quinlan suggested.

“I always did like target practice.”

He expelled a breath that might have been mistaken for a laugh. “I wouldn’t call what you did target practice. It was more like some distorted ricochet theory.”

She smiled then with her eyes still closed as the images from her days at Langley returned. Hitting a target while aiming directly at it was a cinch. She believed it had to do with her uncanny ability in spatial mathematics. Her eye could accurately register the distance between herself and any target, and she knew from the kick of the gun, the slight jerk of her hand, the exact trajectory the bullet would take.

Quinlan would stand behind her and tell her to hit the head of a target and she did. He would tell her to hit the leg, and she could do that, too. It was simple. What was more of a challenge was determining a bullet’s ricochet angle. Knowing what a bullet did if it hit steel, if it hit Kevlar, if it hit brick. Knowing the angle at which she was firing, Sabrina always believed, in principle, she could bounce a bullet in any direction she wanted it to go. More often than not she was wrong. But she’d never stopped trying.

With only the woods to use for practice, she’d come pretty close to figuring out just how to hit a tree the right way to send the bullet sailing dramatically right or left. Depending on the thickness of the bark, of course, and the type of tree. If she told him that, though, he’d make some disbelieving sound. It’s what he used to do.

Other memories of their time together spat at her like rapid fire. Because some of them made her want to smile, she concentrated more on the ones that hurt.

“Did you marry her?”

The words fell out of her mouth and she winced. It had always been like that with him. Always pushing and prodding him, forcing him to talk or at least to react to her because she hated it when he dismissed her. Hated that he always seemed to find it so easy to ignore her. The fact that ten years hadn’t changed anything was really annoying.

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“It was over a year later,” he elaborated.

“Shocker.” She hadn’t wanted to respond, but she’d been surprised that he had bothered to expand on his answer. He didn’t owe her any explanation.

“Bri…”

“Don’t call me that.” Opening her eyes, she pinned her gaze on him so that he would know how serious she was. The nickname brought with it too many of the memories she wanted to forget.

This wasn’t going to work, she realized.

Her mission would not succeed if she found herself wrapped up in some attempt to seek justice for a wrong that was done to her a bunch of years ago. She needed to let it go. If asked under penalty of torture, she would have sworn that she had. Her questions about his marriage suggested otherwise. But it didn’t have to go any further than that. She wouldn’t let it.

“You should know that I didn’t do all of this as some sort of warped attempt to see you again. You have to understand that you weren’t supposed to be part of this. It’s not what I wanted.” She turned away from him and closed her eyes again.

She heard him release a slow breath. “If only that were true.”

The back seat shifted and without looking, she determined that he was planning to catch some sleep. With Quinlan it wouldn’t be an act, either. Sleep was a precious resource. Like food or water. In any conflict, it needed to be taken when it could. He’d taught her that.

To distract her thoughts away from him, she began doing complicated geometrical proofs in her head. She could see the shapes flowing behind her eyes. Could see the angles and how they related to one another. Could see the purity and the simplicity of the theory that determined the answer for every angle on any scale.

Like drinking a tonic, it cleansed her. There was no emotion in the math. Only truth. Only right and only wrong. It played out like a piece of music that she could actually hear. The symphony of order and reason, which, in so many ways, was in direct contrast to her emotional state-typically chaotic and confused. She allowed her mind to go to that place where so few people had ever gone. Where it seemed as if the answer, the one answer behind everything, was within her grasp if she just let go…

Then a vision intruded. In her mind she saw herself sitting in the same seat hours earlier when Quinlan had first picked her up. She saw herself in the space and measured the distance between her knees and the driver’s seat.

Sabrina opened her eyes and looked down at her legs and at the front seat. There was three-eighths of an inch difference.

“Q,” she whispered.

“Hmm.”

“Wake up.”

Her tone conveyed the situation. Instantly, he was alert. She could almost feel the resulting tension that was quickly being dispersed throughout his body.

She pointed to the driver’s seat in front of her and whispered, “It’s been moved up.”

He looked at the seat but shook his head, indicating that he was unable to see any discernible difference from where it was now to where it had been before. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t one, and apparently he trusted her enough to know that she wouldn’t have said it if she didn’t see it.

He stared through the tinted partition where they could see a part of the driver’s head. Sabrina pushed closer to Quinlan, also trying to make out more of the driver’s face. Then she turned and shook her head.

“Shorter,” she mouthed silently.

He looked at her and she could see he was beyond questioning her at this point. Nodding, he reached for his gun. Then hitting a button on the door’s handle, he lowered the partition between them another few inches. Enough to be heard, but leaving enough protection if the man driving aimed a gun over his shoulder.

“Horner, pull over.”

“Can’t,” came the muffled response from the front seat.

“She’s sick. Pull the car over.” As he said this, he pushed Sabrina back against the seat with one arm and lifted his gun out of the holster with his free hand pointing it directly at the head of the driver.

She understood that if the driver didn’t want to pull over, then the driver was going to die. With her hands she searched for the seat belt. It felt as if they were pushing at least sixty on the speedometer, and anything over forty could be deadly for both of them if the driver was suddenly put out of commission and the car made impact with an unmovable force.

She leaned toward Quinlan ready to warn him to put his seat belt on, as well, even as she struggled to fasten hers, but it was too late. The unknown driver, evidently realizing he’d been discovered, veered the car off the highway.

Their destination was unknown, but Sabrina had a feeling she wasn’t going to have anything good to say about the trip.

Chapter 8

As the careening car skidded off the road, the force of a sudden ninety-degree turn sent Sabrina slamming into Quinlan. Another turn, this time in the opposite direction, sent them flying the other way until they were smashed against the door. The pattern continued so quickly that neither was able to grab hold of anything to stop their momentum. Her Defender flew off the back ledge, grazing her cheek before hitting the floor.

Finally, when the car slowed, Quinlan used the opportunity to spread his body out over the length of the car seat. His feet pressed against one door as his hands pushed against the other to steady himself.

“Hold on,” he ordered her.

Lying flat over his body, Sabrina wrapped her arms around his middle and linked her ankles underneath his. She could feel the power of his muscles underneath her body pushing out against the two doors to keep them stable while the car continued to zig and zag.

Sabrina noted the time they had been driving and estimated an average speed. She’d seen enough landmarks through the car window earlier to let her know they had been driving in the intended direction: south. That meant they were probably somewhere close to Gettysburg, maybe even closer to the Maryland border. From past trips down this way Sabrina knew the area was mostly farms, small towns…and woods.

A perfect place to dump a car and two bodies.

Not if she could help it. She let go of Quinlan and with one hand searched the car floor by touch until she found her Defender. She grabbed it, but the car made another sharp angle and it took all her strength just to hold on to Quinlan. He had a better chance of getting a shot off anyway.

“Shoot the partition,” she shouted into his ear above the sound of the turbulent vehicle.

“Bulletproof.” He did, however, lower one arm from the door and take the offered gun. “Try to lower it.”

Sabrina understood immediately that she was in the better position to reach the control panel over his head. It’s where she’d seen him work the partition previously. But before her fingers found the button, she saw the glass sliding up to meet the roof. By the time she got to the panel, it wouldn’t move.

“Forget it,” Quinlan told her. “The partition can be controlled and locked from the front.”

It made sense, considering who had tricked out this car. No doubt the doors were also controlled from the front for the purpose of not letting anyone exit the car without the driver’s permission. The assumption was that the good guys would always be the ones driving.

Bad assumption.

Their only recourse was to wait until the car stopped. Eventually it had to. After another turn and jarring side impact, with what Sabrina had to guess was a pretty significant tree, the driver must have started to hit the brakes. Gravity began to pull against their bodies. Sabrina clung to Quinlan as tightly as she could, but when all movement came to an abrupt end, her grip didn’t hold.

Suddenly she found herself flying the short distance from Quinlan’s body to the wall that was the front seat. Her back slammed against the leather-covered steel frames, the force of the impact knocking the wind out of her. She slid to the floor of the car. Moaning, she tried to suck in some air and roll over so that she was at least facing up ready in spirit for any attack if not in body.

The car was stopped now. It was just a question as to what the driver would do next. Quinlan was already sitting up, the gun she’d pressed into his hand aimed at the door on the driver’s side.

She tried to control her breathing so she could hear what was happening around her, but she couldn’t stop her staccato gasping. The squeak of a door opening was ominous, but the expected clicking sound of the locks being disengaged never happened. Without unlocking the car, the driver wouldn’t be able to open the back doors from the outside.

“What’s he doing?”

“Shh,” he whispered, his senses evidently completely engaged.

She groaned and pushed through the bruising pain in her back to sit up. Still no action.

“He won’t shoot us through the door,” she concluded. “He knows it’s bulletproof.”

“He can blow it up,” Quinlan informed her.

But Sabrina shook her head. “He can’t risk killing me, remember?”

“You think.”

“I know,” she replied. Finally she was able to take a deep breath. “The men back at the house were stalling us. We both agree on that. This guy is doing more of the same. Horner?”

“Probably dead,” he stated coldly. “His own fault for getting out of the car in the first place. Tried to be a hero and instead he ends up…” Quinlan closed his mouth and lowered the Defender.

She read the scowl on his face and knew that his irritation had a lot to do with the disgust over losing an agent. He never liked to lose. Anything. But he would put the agent’s death behind him as if it meant nothing because that’s the only way he could stay focused on the present. She knew this because once upon a time he’d taught her to do the same.

“So we’re stuck?”

“Yes.”

“But I have to pee.” She flashed him a cheeky smile.

Shaking his head he gave her back her gun. “You have a warped sense of humor.”

“At least I have one,” she rallied as she shoved the gun deep in her jeans at the small of her back where she knew it was secure. Then she began to assess the space. “You got a plan?”

“I’m working on it.” Quinlan, too, studied the small area looking for a possibly stealthy exit. There was none.

“Each of us could get out on either side,” she suggested. “He can’t cover both of us.”

“He doesn’t have to. If your theory is right, he won’t be shooting at you.”

Sabrina nodded, agreeing with his conclusion. “Tough break for you then.”

He smirked. “I was thinking more along the lines of both of us surviving.”

“Oh.”

“Besides, we’re locked in. Remember?”

He turned and faced the back seat cushion. He felt around the headrest and tugged. The entire back seat snapped loose from the catches that held it in place and he was able to lower it until it was almost parallel to the seat.

They both stared at the empty trunk.

“He’ll be expecting us to find a way to unlock the doors and get out that way,” she commented, knowing she was merely echoing Quinlan’s thoughts. “Can you hot-wire something and lower the partition?”

“Why?”

“The rearview mirror.” It was all she needed to say.

Quinlan nodded. A little muscle and some help from a pair of tweezers from the first aid kit and he was able to get the casing off the car door panel. He fished out a bunch of wires, picked two, stripped them of their plastic casing and twisted them together. A hum sounded, and the glass between the front and back seats slid down.

That done, he reached through the opening and pulled at the mirror until he managed to break it free from its hinge. She let him work, while she pushed the back seat down as far as possible so she could squeeze her upper body back into the trunk.

“No,” he objected. “I’ll do it.”

“You’re too big. If you crawl back here you’ll make the car dip too much and he’ll know what we’re doing. Besides, I’ve got more room to maneuver,” she explained logically. “Give me the mirror.”

He hesitated.

“You know I’m right. And I know that drives you around the bend a little bit, but this time you don’t have a choice. Hand me the mirror.”

Quinlan passed the mirror through the opening and put it next to her. “There should be a release switch that opens the trunk from the inside.”

Sabrina had already found it. The problem was she had an image of pushing the switch and having the trunk top spring open. It would broadcast their location and could leave her a sitting duck, depending upon where the guy had taken up his position to wait them out. Shifting in slow increments so as not to cause too much motion in the car, she turned first on her side, then on her back. She found a wire secured to the top of the trunk, probably for the brake lights, and tugged. It was tight enough for what she needed.

Holding on to the line, she reached over her head for the button located just under the catch that held the trunk top in place. She pushed it, heard the pop that signaled the catch releasing, then clutched the wire in her hand to hold the trunk lid.

The mirror in her hand now, she loosened her grip on the wire just enough to allow the lid up about an inch. If their kidnapper was watching the trunk, he might realize it had been opened, but she still wasn’t giving him enough space to make a decent shot. Not that she imagined he would, without knowing exactly who he was shooting at.

But Quinlan was right. That was still only a theory. Sabrina saw no need to put it to the test.

Instantly, she knew she was going to need a better angle in order to use the mirror effectively. She turned again, this time even slower, until she was once more on her belly, her legs stretched out over the folded-down seat. She eased the mirror out through the gap she’d left and surveyed the area surrounding the car.

Morning had turned the sky a sort of purplish hue. It was cloudless, which helped the visibility, and she found she didn’t have a problem making out the leafless trees a few feet in front of her.

“What do you see?”

“Trees,” she reported. “Lots of them. He’s parked us in the middle of the damn woods.”

“Can you see him?”

Sabrina angled the mirror first to her right, then to her left. Then back to the right, only this time not as far. Thick trees, thin trees, a squirrel and…there. Behind an oak tree that faced the front of the car so he could see if either car door opened. She could make out the bulky black sleeve of a coat that was slightly exposed, but not much else. The guy was staying low.

“I see him.” She pulled the mirror in through the space she had created, then tugged on the wire slightly to shrink the gap without actually closing the trunk. Turning her head, she saw Quinlan’s face in the opening by the car seat.

“I think I can make the shot.” She watched as suspicion immediately crept into his eyes.

“Do you even have a shot?”

He wasn’t going to like her answer. But it was the best chance they had. “It’s sort of an angular shot.”

“Jesus, Bri,” he groaned, knowing exactly what she meant by an angular shot. “Someday you’re going to learn that you’re not Annie Oakley, but today is not going to be that day.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“We can wait. I’ve got my cell, we can call for backup.”

“Backup? That means we have to wait until they get there, then sit out the standoff. All that is going to take time. Time we don’t have if Kahsan is truly en route.”

He paused, then asked, “Can we toss something out of the trunk, cause a distraction and make him give up his position?”

“He’s too far away. All we’ll do is give up our position. What do we have to lose if I take a shot and miss?”

“Your life. This guy took out Horner, who, trust me, was no slouch. If you miss and he gets a chance to return fire he won’t see who is doing the shooting.”

Quinlan was right. But his prophecy of doom wasn’t going to change her mind.

“If I miss, the surprise of the shot should at least buy me enough time to close the trunk. Then we’ll call for help.”

Quinlan’s expression remained grim.

“The more time we waste, the more time we lose to Kahsan. And I mean it… I really do have to pee.”

“Don’t get cute on the shot,” he said, relinquishing the battle. “Take what you know you can hit.”

Removing the Defender from the back of her jeans, she moved it in front of her head. Then she inched her way closer to the edge of the trunk so she could use the mirror to once again find her target. This time there was a forearm exposed. And part of a shoulder.

His position now committed to memory, Sabrina pulled the mirror back inside and dropped it beside her. She turned again until she was on her back. In order to get off the shot that she wanted, she was going to need to open the trunk a little wider. Enough to get her hand over the side of the car. The position and the angle of the gun was key.

She closed her eyes and saw the trees in front of the car exactly as they had existed seconds ago in her view through the mirror. She saw the target. Slightly to the left of the car. Behind an oak. His left forearm and left shoulder exposed.

The fact that he’d exposed his left side meant it wasn’t his gun hand. So a shot at his shoulder, even if she hit him, wouldn’t-shouldn’t, depending on his training-stop him from returning fire.

In the picture in her head, Sabrina saw the tree immediately to the target’s left. The bark on the tree looked thick and rough. A shot fired at the perfect angle, at the perfect height would ricochet sharp right. Exactly where the target’s head should be.

Even if she missed, his natural instinct would be to duck. Giving her more than enough time to close the trunk or get off a second shot. The latter wouldn’t be likely, but she didn’t rule it out as an option.

“I mean it, Sabrina. Don’t get cute.”

She didn’t bother to answer. Strange, she thought. It wasn’t like him to say anything at this point when it would serve as nothing more than a distraction. It signaled to her just how worried he was. She wondered at the cause of it. Did he fear for her life, or was he more worried that with her death Arnold’s precious data would be lost forever?

She didn’t think she really wanted to know the answer to that question and decided it didn’t matter. Her job was to stay focused on the task. The shot was there. She’d done it a hundred times in the woods out in the back of her house. All she needed to do was let it happen.

After a calming breath, she sprang into action. Sabrina gently pushed on the trunk top, moving her gun hand out over the edge of the car’s frame as it lifted ever so slightly. She knew where the gun needed to be pointed, knew how high the shot needed to be. In anticipation of the kickback, she lifted the sight of the Defender three-quarters of an inch and squeezed the trigger.

Because the position of the gun was close to her ear, the sound of the shot practically exploded inside her head. The resonating buzz echoed so loudly she almost missed it. But not quite.

It was the brief high-pitched sound of her target howling in pain.

Then there was only silence.

Chapter 9

Twelve years ago

A loud knock on her door broke the silence and startled her.

Sabrina didn’t get many visitors at the convent. Converted convent, she corrected herself, enjoying the irony of that phrase. The CIA had bought the building just outside of Langley near McLean, Virginia, from a group of Carmelite nuns who had seen their numbers dwindle to two. She’d been assured from several sources that the CIA had no part in their demise in an attempt to scoop up the property, but she wasn’t all that sure she believed it.

The fourteen-room building consisted of a kitchen that Sabrina made little use of, preferring to order in; a common living area that had no TV so basically was always empty; a library; a chapel; several spartan dorm rooms; and an attic that had been converted into an apartment for visiting agents who didn’t have a permanent residence in the D.C. area.

When Sabrina first arrived there had been only one other member of the Youth Adoption Program, a language whiz named Chet, in residence. Chet had left a few weeks after her arrival to begin his career. Since then she’d been the sole student. Apparently super genius teenagers weren’t that easy to come by.

And there was Quinlan. He always claimed the attic apartment whenever he was back in the country from assignment. She liked to imagine it was so he could check up on her and, of course, fuss about the volume of her stereo. But the reality was, it was probably just convenient for him, rather than maintaining a separate residence when he was so often gone for long stretches at a time.

This time he’d been gone for over six months.

Actually, it was six months, one week, three days and well, she wasn’t going to count the hours even though she could. After he’d successfully, as he put it, settled her in and had healed completely from his earlier injuries, there had been no point in sticking around. His real skill was recruiting and cultivating assets in the field. It’s what he’d been trained to do.

After almost a year of working with him day in and day out, he’d left her without so much as a goodbye.

Not that she expected any different. Quinlan, she had ascertained during their association, wasn’t a man who formed connections. After all that time baiting him, teasing him, fighting with him, she still didn’t know his story. Because that was the way he wanted it.

Jumping up from her short couch she made her way to the door. She didn’t think to ask who it was, or worry about an intruder. The CIA provided the security that surrounded the building. Granted, the guards who watched the place-most of them on this assignment as a form of punishment-liked to call themselves baby-sitters. Sabrina didn’t mind. They were good at keeping people out.

Including her father the one time he bothered to check up on her. She had refused his visit, and the baby-sitters had done their job.

She opened the door quickly and sucked in her breath just as quickly. “Q.”

“Bri,” he returned.

“Come in.”

Quinlan walked into her room as he did any other room he ever entered: cautiously. He surveyed the small space then turned back to her. “You haven’t done much with it since I left.”

Sabrina considered the bare white walls. There was a single bed, covered with a tan comforter and two pillows. She had a weathered oak desk, a pretty comfortable office chair and a state-of-the-art laptop with wireless Internet access. She had a TV, a lumpy green two-seater couch and a minifridge. It was basically the exact same room she’d walked into two years ago. Except for the minifridge. That had been her only addition.

She supposed other teenage girls might have posters up or shoes and clothes pouring out of closets. Maybe there should be makeup scattered over her desk, and silly pictures of her and friends taken in one of those booths at the fair. But she didn’t have friends. She didn’t go to fairs. She didn’t have money, except for a small monthly stipend that covered the cost of things like shampoo, toothpaste, tampons and the most basic of clothing necessities.

No, the room wasn’t cluttered. Then again, neither was her life. Still, feeling as if she’d failed some kind of test, she asked, “Was I supposed to?”

“No.”

“Have a seat.” She felt like a grown-up for having said it. So much so, she added, “Can I get you something to drink?”

His eyebrow arched in a way she recalled that meant he was assessing whether or not she was teasing. In this case she wasn’t. She opened the minifridge and pulled out two bottles of Coors Light. When he scowled, she merely shrugged. “Arnold smuggled them in for me on his last visit. He says alcohol helps relax the brain. Gives a genius a break and all that,” she defended and handed him one. “It’s no big deal.”

“You’re underage.”

“I can fire a grenade launcher, although they still won’t teach me how to shoot a gun. Which, by the way, I’m pretty sure I could kick some butt doing. I’m a master of several forms of hand-to-hand combat. I can fluently read four languages. I think I can handle a beer. A light one at that.”

Seemingly resigned to that fact, Quinlan took the offered beverage and twisted off the top and tossed it across the room directly into the open trash can next to her desk. Then he moved to the couch and sat. Heavily, she thought. Almost wearily.

On the cushion next to him was a game of solitaire in progress. She gathered up the cards, not before remembering exactly how they had been positioned, and sat next to him.

“Why not just play on the computer?”

“I like the feel of the cards in my hand,” she offered.

He took a healthy sip of his beer and for a few seconds said nothing. She wanted to pounce with questions about where he’d been, what he’d been doing for the past six months and, more importantly, why he looked so tired, but she figured she’d give him a little breathing room. Not a lot. Just a little.

“Your language teachers are concerned,” he said finally.

“You spoke to them?” she asked, surprised he would even know what was going on with her day-to-day class load.

He nodded. “They say you can read fine, but your comprehension is only average and your accent sucks…in everything.”

Sabrina grimaced. Her accents did suck. Badly in French, Russian and Arabic. In Cantonese, forget it. “It’s not my strong suit. I can memorize an alphabet instantly, so reading words is no problem. But speaking a language and understanding it when it’s spoken…” She trailed off not wanting to finish that admission.

“You’re just like everybody else,” Quinlan finished for her.

Leave it to him to be back for five seconds and still find a way to hit her where it hurt. Maybe there had been a time when she wanted to be like everyone else, but not now. Not since he’d shown her how important it was simply to be who she was.

“Auditory retention isn’t my thing. Everything I do, you know the freaky stuff, is visual.”

“That means you might forget something you’ve heard,” he said.

There was some surprise in that statement. Probably because he was one of the few people who understood the limitlessness of her memory. “I guess. I probably remember more than your average person, but I’ve got no real extraordinary talent in that area. Why? You want to tell me something that you hope I forget? Try me.”

He smiled. “No, I just forgot that even you have limitations.”

“Filled with them.”

Another drag on his beer, another pause. Then, “They told me that your father came to see you.”

“Yeah?” Instinctively, she crossed her arms over her chest, the bottle of beer hanging from her fingers. Then looking down and seeing what she had done, she uncrossed her arms and instead took a sip of her drink.

“You didn’t see him.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Sabrina, the CIA is not going to move you into a field operative position with this kind of emotional baggage. You said yourself you didn’t want to be stuck in a room deciphering code for the rest of your life. That you wanted to be on the front line.”

“I do. I just didn’t want to see my father. It’s no big deal. I went down to the Pentagon and asked him if he wanted to have lunch or something. He didn’t have time. So when he came by to see me, I didn’t have time. This is what we do. This is who we are. There’s no baggage.” There was an unhealthy level of competition between her and her father, but that was more his doing than it was hers.

“Okay,” he replied, apparently willing to let it drop.

“It’s been excessively dull here since you left. No one yells at me because the music is too loud. No one gets my jokes.”

“Your jokes aren’t that funny.”

Sabrina’s lips twitched. “And no one rips my self-confidence to shreds like you do.”

“You need it,” he told her.

She shrugged her shoulder in agreement. “Tell me where you were. Afghanistan?”

His response was merely to shoot her a knowing glance that suggested she was foolish for even asking.

“Come on? How secret could it be? I’m one of you now.”

He smiled at that and tilted the bottle up, finishing the beer in a few swallows. He stood up, placed the empty on top of the fridge then reached inside for another. When he sat down again, she eyed the beer. “If you plan on drinking all of them-” which she suspected was his intent despite the fact that it was very un-Quinlan-like “-then you have to replace them.”

“Sure.”

He was lying. But she took a measure of satisfaction in knowing that she was on to him. He didn’t want her getting caught with the beer in her fridge, but rather than fight her on it, he’d simply eliminate the problem. In class they called it “OE”: obstacle elimination.

“Rumor is that you were moving in on Kahsan,” she prompted.

“What do you know about Kahsan?” he asked, his voice skeptical.

“I know he’s public enemy number one,” she elaborated. “The bastard son of a prince from the United Arab Emirates. Financially secure, because all the money was on his mother’s side. Educated in England, first at Eton, then at Oxford. And for the past five years he’s been the mastermind behind several terrorist attacks. What makes him unusual is that he doesn’t seem to be affiliated with any one terrorist group or any fanatical position. Rather he’s more like a brain for hire for the bad guys. They say he’s brilliant.”

“A highly overused adjective as far as I’m concerned.”

The subtle dig made her laugh, but she didn’t back off. “Rumor also has it that you two tangled during a black-op in Kuwait.”

“You know better than to listen to rumors.”

“Yes, but if one is willing to look beyond the rumor one can often find the shards of a fact.”

His lips twitched, probably because he recognized his own quote. “You are learning well, young grasshopper.”

She smiled. Already she could see just from their short conversation, and probably the beer, that he was infinitely more relaxed than he had been when he first came in. She was good for him, she concluded.

“It’s true isn’t it? It’s personal between you two.”

He looked over at her, frowning but not scowling. “It’s not. It’s business. He’s an enemy of the United States, and my job is to take him out.”

“He’s the one who shot you, wasn’t he? The one who gave you the scar?” She reached up and brushed a finger over the puckered scar that lined his forehead near his hairline. The one that had been fresh when they first met. He caught her hand in his, his hold almost painful, but she didn’t back down. It was a weird moment with the kind of silence that made both people feel uncomfortable, but neither was willing to end it.

Finally, he pushed her hand back at her. “Don’t touch.”

“Fine. Just tell me if you got him?”

“I…we…didn’t.”

“Next time,” she encouraged him, sorry to see that relaxed look she’d induced fade back to weariness.

“Yeah.”

“You want to watch a movie or something?”

“No, I only stopped by to see what was up with your father.”

“And to bitch about my language grades.”

“And that. Language skills are critical for field ops. Most of what we do is talking and listening. It’s not quite as action packed as I imagine you think it is. I’ve only used a grenade launcher once.”

“Are you sticking around then? Maybe you can help me with my accents.”

He nodded. “I’ll be sticking around for a while. After all, someone has to teach you how to shoot.”

“Yes! Finally. Small arms.”

“Should I be worried that you’re this excited about handling a gun?”

“Don’t worry. You’re not on my list of people to take out,” she teased. “I was just wondering what was taking so long to get to it. But I guess I still have a year in the program before they turn me loose so there’s plenty of time.”

“A year,” he muttered. Then he shook his head as if he was just recalling something unpleasant.

She wasn’t sure what it was, but she sensed he was going to leave and she wasn’t ready for that yet. “What about a game of cards? Gin. Ten cents a point.”

He stared down at the deck in her hand. To impress him she shuffled the cards.

“Cards with a math genius?”

“You just implied the description is overused.” She egged him on. “I know you’re not scared.”

“Okay. What the hell?”

They played for over three hours, drank all the beer and ended up moving on to Diet Coke. He ordered a pizza, pepperoni because they both liked it, and she took him for twenty-one dollars and thirty cents.

For her it had been a really good night.

Chapter 10

Present

“Got him.” Sabrina pushed open the trunk, but stopped when she felt Quinlan’s hand wrap around her ankle. Their eyes met, but she didn’t want to think about what she saw in his face. “I got him,” she assured him.

“I’ll go first.”

Rather than crawl through the space left open by the already flattened seat, he worked at pushing down the one next to it.

Sabrina shook her head. “You know there was a time when you wouldn’t have minded brushing up against me.”

He looked at her, but said nothing. The poker face was back. It was a pretty good one, too.

“I’m glad I never ran up against you at a table in Vegas.”

Quinlan hopped out of the trunk and immediately dropped into a squat, his gun in hand, ready. No shots were fired.

“I told you I got him,” Sabrina muttered as she crawled out of the trunk to stand next to him. She lifted a finger and pointed. “He’s over there.”

She started to walk in the opposite direction, but again Quinlan reached out to stop her, this time grabbing on to her arm.

“Where are you going?”

“I wasn’t kidding. I have to pee. And I don’t want an audience.”

She stared down at where his hand circled her arm and waited. There was no point in struggling. He would let her go on his terms and only then. After a moment, probably once he realized they were stuck in the middle of the woods with nowhere to run, he dropped his hand.

“This isn’t going to work,” she blurted.

“What?”

“You and me.”

“There is no you and me,” he said coldly.

There was. And she wanted to call him on it, but decided it wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t about them anymore. It was only about the mission. And he was getting in her way.

“I meant us working together,” she clarified. “Not if you can’t even trust me to pee, for Pete’s sake.”

“Trust? You’re thinking about FBI partners. Doesn’t work like that in the CIA. You know that. Go take care of your business. I’ll wait here.”

Sabrina stomped off into the woods. Not because she was mad, but because she wanted to send any living creature left in the area scurrying. There was no point in being angry with Quinlan. She wasn’t going to sway him. She wasn’t going to be able to reason with him. Only her actions would change his mind. So far she’d run from him, then kneed him in the groin, then lied to him about Kahsan. Not the most conducive behavior for winning someone’s trust.

She was going to have to work on that.

When she returned to the car she saw him searching for identification on the body. Predictably, his hands came up empty. Steeling herself against the sight of death, she did what she’d been trained to do in these situations and disassociated herself from the kill.

Leaning over Quinlan’s shoulder, she saw the mess the ricocheting bullet had made with the man’s face.

“Ew,” she moaned, trying only to see what she’d done and not feel it. “Messy. But hey, what a shot.”

Quinlan glanced over and saw a chunk missing from the tree directly to the left of the body and shook his head. “Ridiculous.”

“But it worked.”

“You couldn’t have left him alive so we could have questioned him?”

Sabrina’s jaw dropped as she pointed to the tree then back to the car. “Excuse me, did you see the angle on this shot? I got him. We’re out. Be happy with that.”

He nodded. “It would have been better if we could have questioned him and ascertained that he was, in fact, working for Kahsan. You know he isn’t the only bad guy out there. Any one of them would want to know the location of terrorists already inside the country.”

“Yes, but none of them would know about me. And they certainly wouldn’t know how important keeping me alive was.”

They left the body and walked back to the car only to find that their sudden stop hadn’t been caused by the driver hitting the brakes hard, but rather by a large tree, which the front of the Cadillac was currently wrapped around.

“That sort of sucks,” Sabrina noted.

“You mean because we’re going to have to walk out of these woods?”

“No, I was thinking that it sucks for the driver, who was lucky to have survived this impact only to get it in the face ten minutes later.”

Quinlan regarded her for a moment.

“I’m not going soft,” she insisted. Heaven forbid. Softness had been driven out of her a long time ago. “I’m just saying it sucks, that’s all.”

“From the very beginning your psyche profile indicated an unwillingness to take a life,” he said, as if just recalling that particular fact.

“Okay, but here is where I’m going to point out that that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

“It almost kept you out of the program.”

This was news. She was doing all of this, risking everything really, to be let back in, thinking it was the only place she truly belonged and Quinlan was telling her that she’d almost not gotten into the program in the first place.

For a moment she tried to imagine what her life would have been like if she’d never started down the CIA path. If she’d never met Quinlan. She didn’t like the idea, which was almost hysterically funny considering the number of times she’d wished that she’d never met Quinlan.

“I’d still be stuck with the geeks at Harvard,” she muttered, wondering if she had stayed on that course would the past ten years have been more productive? More purposeful? Maybe if she’d stayed there…

“You never would have lasted with them,” Quinlan said, interrupting her thoughts. “You were ready to bail when we found you, remember?”

Yes, she remembered. And he was probably right. She wouldn’t have stayed, which meant she probably would have just gotten thrown out of the casinos at a younger age. Quinlan had come at a very pivotal time in her development. He saved her really. Absolutely, she’d needed him back then.

But she didn’t anymore. What she did need, however, was a new direction. Or, she supposed, an old one.

Sabrina glanced back at the body. “If you’re worried that I’m not up to handling the job-”

“What makes you think it’s going to be any easier to kill Kahsan?”

“Because Kahsan is a bad guy. I don’t have a problem taking out the bad guys. The driver was just a stooge. Some grunt taking orders to keep us occupied and out of commission until he got word from his boss. I did what I had to do to ensure our escape, I don’t have to be happy about it.”

He didn’t respond, but instead took the phone off his belt and dialed a number.

Sabrina walked away and tried to get a sense of where they were. She contemplated the drive from the time they left the house. Then she glanced up and saw the position of the sun coming up over the trees.

“This is Quinlan. I need a location.”

While he was talking to someone back at headquarters, who was probably using a GPS to figure out where they were, Sabrina made her way back to him.

“The highway is about two miles south of us. Once we get back there, there’s a motel about ten miles east. We can probably get to it before your people get to us.”

Quinlan pulled the phone away from his ear, and Sabrina could hear someone on the other end giving him the exact same information. For whatever reason he seemed annoyed that she’d been able to determine their position without the satellite.

She just shrugged her shoulders. “What can I say? I know the area.”

“Get me Krueger,” Quinlan said into the phone, and then frowned as he listened to the other person give his response. He seemed to hesitate for a moment before he said, “No. No need to pull him out of a meeting. Let him know our situation and tell him to contact me as soon as possible. And you’ll need to send a cleanup team to Stansfield.”

Sabrina jumped on that. “Hey, tell them while they’re picking up bodies that if they want to go ahead and put on a new porch that would be okay by me. And remind them that if they fix the door, I had stained glass…”

He didn’t bother to roll his eyes, just snapped the phone shut and replaced it on his belt, then holstered his gun, certain now that there was no one else in the woods waiting for them. “Let’s go.”

“Maybe once we get to the highway we can hitch,” she suggested.

“No, we’ll keep to just inside the woods and parallel the highway. I’m not taking any chances.”

“You think Kahsan is going to drive by on Route 15?” She was being sarcastic, but Quinlan wasn’t laughing.

“We both agree there is a real possibility that he’s in the country. If that’s the case, then yes, I think he might be able to drive by on Route 15.”

There was something in his tone, Sabrina concluded. Something that suggested he wasn’t happy and she didn’t think it had anything to do with the fact that they had a long walk in front of them. She figured now was as good a time as any to lay more of the groundwork for what was to come.

“I thought you would approve of my plan,” she told him. “You can’t tell me, me of all people, that you’re not chomping at the bit right now because you believe Kahsan is close and you have a chance to take him down.”

“It’s a chance. I’ll give you that. But not one you had to take.”

“I don’t mind being the bait,” she offered and realized that she meant it. “I had nothing else to do.”

He released a breath and followed with his eyes the puff of icy air that escaped his mouth. In an efficient motion he removed his overcoat and handed it to her.

“I told you I didn’t want it,” she protested.

“Take the coat. Give me the gloves. And don’t argue.”

Sabrina considered being stubborn, but the truth was she was cold and it was going to be a long walk. He was wearing a heavier sweater and, given his weight over hers, wouldn’t be as susceptible to the cold. Plus, she planned on pressing him on the first question she’d asked so there was no point putting up a fight over the coat.

Pulling it around her as she pushed her arms into the too long sleeves, she tried to ignore the scent of him that immediately infiltrated her senses. It was so familiar to her. It seemed strange that it should be that way after ten years, but it was. Mentally, she sighed and moved on to practical matters. She found the gloves, one in each pocket, and tossed them to him.

“Let’s go,” he ordered and started heading south, his legs eating up the distance, so that she had to almost jog to keep up.

“So tell me what you thought when they told you to come get me,” she urged. “I can’t imagine you were thrilled.”

He didn’t turn around, but he did answer her. “No, I wasn’t.”

“Were you really that freaked out about seeing me again?”

He stopped then, so abruptly she almost ran into his back. He spun around and she waited for his reply.

“You’ve always got to push,” he muttered.

But she heard him. “I know. I want to know. Tell me what’s got you all riled up. I can’t believe this is about seeing me again.”

“You think this is about you? You think I would let a bad scene from ten years ago affect me?”

No, she didn’t, but now he was even more worked up.

“That’s incredibly arrogant.”

“Maybe. But I think about how the last person I wanted to pick me up for this job was you, and then I can’t help but think that the last person you would have ever wanted to deal with again was me. But I didn’t have a choice. You did. You could have told them to send someone else. What are you doing here?”

“I told you why I was here.”

“Because you don’t trust me,” she reiterated. “That’s right. You already knew about the contact with Kahsan. So you thought you were coming to save the day. Only now you realize that I’m the one running this show. Is that it? Don’t tell me you’re jealous? Jealous that I got to him first?”

Quinlan ran a hand through his short-cropped hair, his agitation, something he rarely displayed, was evident.

“I was in Pakistan when I got his call,” he began. “Krueger telling me to get back ASAP because they wanted to give an ex-agent a crack at breaking an unbreakable code. Then I hear about some woman making contact with… I thought, shit, it’s finally happened. Sabrina’s finally been turned to the dark side. Hell, we knew it was just a matter of time.”

The verbal assault was supposed to hurt her, but she let it go. Mostly because she didn’t believe it. Smugly, she challenged him.

“That’s not true. If you were really worried about me turning traitor, you would have called in the cops and had me taken out. Picked up to be interrogated by some FBI or CIA goons at the very least. No, you waited because you wanted to make contact with me first to find out what I was up to. Don’t think you can mess with my head, Q. Once upon a time, you used to be able to do that. Not anymore. You knew damn well what I was doing. Tell me the truth. You wanted in.”

“In?” His tone was pure astonishment. “In on this great plot you have to use yourself as a human lure? It’s laughable. Kahsan is like the fucking tide. He can’t be controlled or contained. But you think you’re going to manipulate him? With what? A carrot?” He laughed out loud, a short, harsh sound, then pinned her with his gaze.

“This plan was poorly thought out. And now, because of you, because of your recklessness, which by the way wasn’t entirely unexpected, this man is loose inside this country and after you. Which means I don’t get to fail, Bri. I don’t have the luxury of missing him this time to try again. Three times I’ve come close with nothing to show for it but some dead assets and dead agents. Good people. People with families. I’ve got to get this done now, and the only person who can help me is you. You, who I still don’t know if I can trust.”

“Wow,” she breathed softly. “That is, like, the most words I’ve ever heard you say at once.” His face turned a splotchy red and she feared he might literally explode. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make a joke… But Q, you’ve got to understand something. I want this guy, too.”

“No, you want back in,” he corrected her. “Isn’t that what you said? And for some reason you’ve decided you need to be a hero to make that happen.”

“You don’t think I can do it? You don’t think I can be a hero?” She wanted to know, even as she choked around the word hero.

“It’s not a matter of what you can do. It’s why you’re doing it. You want back in?” he questioned again, his tone incredulous. “Hell, you’ve spent most of your life trying to get out. Away from your father, away from me and away from the CIA. Don’t try to deny it. There is only one person in this world that I know better than I know Kahsan and that’s you.”

This time she shook her head fiercely. “No. That’s not fair. You knew a girl named Sabrina Masters. A girl genius with a chip on her shoulder and a bad attitude. You took that girl and you made her believe in something. Then you took it all away.

“Ten years, Q. Ten years of trying to forget and get back on my feet. Ten years of trying to figure out who I am and what the hell I’m supposed to be doing. You think you’ve got a monopoly on wanting to take out the bad guys? Well, you’re wrong. You told me I could have been the best. I know that. And I know that I have to live with the ten years I’ve lost. Maybe it was reckless contacting him, but you have to believe that I can do this. I can make this happen, I can take Kahsan out and-”

“And what?” he asked when she stopped abruptly.

And make it all right again. That’s what she’d been about to say. Sabrina dropped down on a heavy log and put her face in her hands. She’d returned Arnold’s first e-mail, called Krueger, accepted his deal to play this role and made contact with Kahsan, all of it, because she’d wanted to make up for those ten years.

Why?

Because it would make her feel better? Because it would erase the guilt?

None of the answers were noble. More, they were selfish. She hadn’t stopped to think of the consequences, but in her defense it was only because she hadn’t considered that she might fail. She had always believed that she was that good.

Failure was exactly what Quinlan was considering.

Kahsan was “in-country.” A horrible and frightening reality. The devil had come knocking and someone had left the door unlocked.

Maybe he would have come anyway. Or Krueger could have moved on to Plan B. Or maybe not. Maybe if she’d said no, she could have stopped it. But it was too late. He was coming. Because of her. It was only now that she understood how serious the risk she’d been taking and how dangerous the game she’d been playing were.

But the payoff… Would it be worth it? Only a clairvoyant would know.

“You didn’t like my plan because you know if I miss him the cost could be catastrophic,” Sabrina stated for the record.

Quinlan walked over and sat next to her on the log, his thigh pushed up against hers. “I’ve missed him three times. Three fucking times. And I’m pretty good.”

His humility was a joke, but she couldn’t laugh, not when the pressure of what she’d done was weighing on her chest like a fallen set of dumbbells. “For someone so smart I can be pretty slow sometimes. I always think I have all the answers.”

Quinlan chortled briefly. “It was always hard training you because you believed so much in your abilities. And your abilities were remarkable. Are remarkable. I was constantly caught between trying to push you to go further while at the same time trying to show you that you couldn’t do it all.”

For a moment they let silence reign. The echo of a memory they both knew well, lingering, but being left unspoken. Only the sound of the wind rustling against dead leaves interrupted.

Then Sabrina stood in a rush of forward motion and brushed off the dirt and debris from his coat where it covered her bottom. “Here’s the thing. It’s too late to stop any of this now. Even if we wanted to.”

“I know.”

Apparently his tirade, while somewhat uncharacteristic, had been necessary for him to get what he needed to say off his chest. There was a lot of stuff between them, stuff that could get in the way. She guessed that the more they put out in the open to be dealt with, the better it would be for both of them.

“We need to move.”

Quinlan stood, too, and began walking in silent agreement that forward was their only possible direction.

“I want you to know something,” she began. “I’m not lying about wanting back in. It may seem contradictory to the actions in my past, but it’s the truth. I’m not going to waste a whole lot of breath trying to convince you. I know that you still have to figure it out for yourself. But there’s going to come a time when you’re going to have to trust me, and I need you to know when that time comes, I won’t let you down.”

He said nothing, but he did nod to acknowledge her words.

They walked alongside each other for a time, neither saying anything. The crunch of leaf corpses falling victim under their feet serenaded them. Then because she couldn’t stand the silence anymore Sabrina, as always, broke first.

“Come on, though, you have to admit…that was one hell of a shot back there. Off the tree, into the face, nothing but net.”

“Sabrina.”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

Chapter 11

Twelve years ago

Quinlan glanced down at his trainee who was currently staring with rapt attention at the gun in his hand. He lifted the weapon to Sabrina’s eye level, wishing he was more certain that she was ready for this. He wasn’t. But it was time.

“This weapon is-”

“A semiautomatic.40 caliber Glock 22. Full-size with controllable recoil, a barrel length of 4 and 5/8 inches and weight of approximately 25.67 ounces,” Sabrina interrupted him. “I sort of memorized all the major gun models used by most government agents. Want me to tell you about the SIG-Sauer-”

“This weapon is-” he continued undaunted.

“Lightweight. Manageable. And takes a standard ten-round magazine. I know. But let me ask you this. What with us being CIA agents-”

“You’re not an agent yet,” Quinlan corrected her.

“Whatever. I’m just saying. In keeping with the spirit of things, don’t you think we should be buying American?”

“I think you, on your first day of small arms weapon training, should shut up.”

“Touchy, touchy,” she tisked.

Quinlan breathed deeply trying to find some patience. He had no doubt he was going to need it. “That might be because I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. One guess as to why.”

“Madonna?”

“Is that who that was?” he wondered.

“She’s going through this transitional phase. It’s really powerful. Sometimes you’ve just got to crank it. You know?”

He didn’t bother to question that, fearing it would make him seem older than he truly was. Instead, he pulled her hand toward his and placed the gun in her flattened palm.

“Let’s start with basic target practice. There is a target twenty feet out directly in front of you. Can you see it?”

They were standing together in a single cube of an indoor shooting range that was part of the Langley complex. Targets were at various different distances for each cube. They each wore safety goggles along with a set of ear protectors that would muffle the report of the gun while still allowing them to hear each other when they spoke. Muffled sounds of guns going off came from the far right of them, but there were at least three empty cubes on either side of them.

Quinlan hadn’t wanted her to be intimidated by the other agents’ accuracy.

“Yep. Only it’s twenty feet, four and a half inches.”

“Freak,” he accused, but with no acidity so she didn’t flinch. He’d called her that so often by now she’d grown used to the title. It was practically an endearment.

“Sorry,” she replied with a shrug of her shoulders. Though he knew she wasn’t. Not really.

“There is an outline of a head and chest. For now I want you to concentrate only on getting the shot inside the outlined figure. Here’s what you want to do.”

Quinlan stepped behind her and paused. Then he pushed forward, forcing himself to go through the motions he would have taken with any other student.

He moved behind her, placed his arms over hers, his hands gripping each of her wrists. To brace her for the impact that was to come, he pushed his whole body against her back, his knees just brushing the back of her knees. He heard her breathing pick up. He felt her body tense. Enough that he felt compelled to ask, “Nervous?”

She exhaled between her lips before she answered, “No.”

A few tendrils of hair escaped from the headset she wore and brushed against his cheek, distracting him. “Next time pull your hair back.”

She nodded, but it only caused her hair to caress his cheek even more. Focusing on the lesson, he gritted his teeth against the softness and the smell. Lavender.

“You don’t want to pull or jerk the trigger. You want to squeeze it in your hand, absorbing the recoil as it happens. You’re not going to be prepared for the power of the…”

The shot went off before he finished his instruction and he bit back a curse. “This is becoming a problem, Sabrina.”

She turned her head, lifting her safety goggles up over her eyes, and giving him a cheeky smile. “Premature firing? No one has ever complained before.”

His steady gaze conveyed his displeasure. Her tendency to jump the gun, literally, was beginning to become an issue. And this wasn’t the first time he’d addressed it.

“Whatever,” she harrumphed in response to his non-reply. “I bet the money you lost to me the other night that I got him right between the eyes.”

Quinlan hit a button on the side of the cube, drawing the paper figure closer to see exactly where she landed the shot.

It wasn’t quite between the eyes, but it was close.

“I didn’t account enough for the reverberation in my hands after the explosion,” she said glancing at the target. “Don’t hold me this time. Let me try it on my own.”

“I wasn’t holding you. I was steadying you,” he retorted. But he stayed to the left of her and hit the button to send the target back.

He watched her brace her legs apart to prepare herself for the impact. Then she tilted her head and studied the target for a moment. He wondered what she was seeing, how the world looked to a person who could accurately tell at a glance the distance between two objects, when suddenly she fired off three more rounds.

By the time the target reached them they could both see that she had created a significant hole in the location that would be between a man’s eyes. All three shots hit almost exactly the same spot.

“Cool,” she whispered. “I knew I would be good at this.”

“Why?”

She hesitated for a moment because he knew the probing irritated her. As a rule, she didn’t like to answer those types of questions. Using her abilities was fine. Being challenged to see how far she could push them didn’t bother her. But when she had to explain them, or dissect them, she invariably froze.

It reminded him that, although she may tolerate being called a freak, it didn’t mean she wasn’t sensitive about it. Too bad, he thought. She didn’t have those kinds of choices anymore. “Why?” he prodded. “It’s important Sabrina. We need to understand so we know exactly what you’re capable of.”

“It’s the spatial thing,” she answered finally. “And physics and geometry and I don’t know.” She lifted her hands up in a helpless gesture and Quinlan moved in to remove the weapon from her grip.

She grimaced; obviously realizing that she’d forgotten the gun was still in her hand.

“Go on,” he encouraged her.

“I can estimate the speed and the trajectory of the bullet coming out of the barrel based on the length of the barrel, the drag of the ballistics and everything else I remember from the textbooks about the science of shooting. I can see the exact distance between here and the target. Put it all together and I know exactly where the gun needs to be pointed in order to hit what I aim at. It’s just a question of keeping my hands still and, like you said, absorbing the recoil. I have really steady hands.”

Quinlan nodded. “Since target practice is beyond you, we’ll try another exercise.” He hit another button next to the one that controlled the target’s distance and a raised platform came up from the floor. It basically looked like an oversize pinwheel, with pictures attached to each spoke.

“The target is going to spin,” he explained. “It will stop randomly on a picture. You’ve got to determine if the target is a threat and fire. If you hear this-” a buzzer sounded above their heads “-it means you took too long on a target that was a threat and you were shot. Ready?”

She nodded.

Quinlan hit the button again and set the target in motion. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before. Her processing powers were extraordinary as she methodically identified each target and either held her fire or took aim. After one reload the final target appeared and she lifted her weapon.

“It’s a grandma.”

Quinlan squinted a little and checked out the picture. It was a grandma. Not once had the buzzer sounded above their heads. When he checked the stats on the monitor above the control panel, he saw the result. Twenty out of twenty. She’d hit every target she was supposed to and missed every one she should have.

“Well?”

“Perfect,” he said, trying to recall the last time he’d seen any rookie come close. Not that there was any point in trying to remember something that hadn’t happened.

Sabrina set the gun down and removed the ear protectors. She raised her hands in the air and jerked her hips a little to the left and right. “I rock!”

Unable to help himself, he smiled.

“Quinlan. A moment.”

They both turned as they spotted a suit walking toward their cubicle. The man’s name was Geiger, one of the assistant directors of the counter-terrorist division at the agency. He was also in charge of the Youth Adoption Program and Quinlan’s superior.

Quinlan lifted his ear protectors off his head and removed the safety goggles. “You’ve got a few more magazines left,” he told Sabrina, indicating the ammunition in front of her. “Push the target back as far as it will go and see how you do.”

With that he left the cube and met the man in the walkway that ran behind the row of units. The man had about ten years on Quinlan, but remained in solid shape. The gray at his temples gave him a distinguished look, as did the expensive suit, but there was no mistaking the fact that this man was once an active agent. Hard-core.

He glanced over at where Sabrina was firing.

“She’s got good form.”

“She’s accurate,” Quinlan stated conservatively.

“I saw the readout on the judgment program upstairs.”

This was news. “You were checking up on us. Her.” Quinlan internally bristled at the idea, but gave no indication of that to his superior.

“I’m in charge of the YAP. Currently, she’s our only student. It’s my job to follow up. Yes, I’ve been checking up on her. She’s established quite a reputation in your absence. Most of the other trainers hate working with her because she’s too damn smart for her own good. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Does it bother you working with her?”

“No,” Quinlan said.

Geiger paused for a second as if waiting for Quinlan to continue. When he didn’t, Geiger pushed. “I’m looking for an assessment.”

“You have my early reports. The reports from the others.”

“I do. But I want to hear it from you. Will she make it?”

“She’s got a tremendous amount of potential,” Quinlan offered.

“Clearly. Perfect on the judgment test first time out. I’ve never seen that before,” Geiger noted.

“Neither have I.”

“How is that possible?”

“I believe, although you would have to ask her, that it’s probably a result of the speed at which her brain processes information that she sees. She’s able to spot the target and identify it as a threat or not almost instantaneously. It gives her an edge.”

Geiger acknowledged the information. “That’s fine. But the reports I’m getting back from some of the other trainers aren’t as favorable. They say she’s willful.”

That wasn’t a surprise. “She has a difficult time following orders. Comes from being on her own and independent for so long. There was only her father, and he was more absent than present. She essentially raised herself. She can also be impatient, which I believe stems from a tremendous confidence in her abilities.”

“You’re saying she’s cocky,” Geiger interpreted.

Quinlan followed the man’s gaze to where Sabrina was dancing about in the cube as she studied the target that she’d decimated with shots to the head and heart.

In the center of the target, she’d shot, albeit a lopsided one, a smiley face.

“She’s…” Quinlan didn’t finish that thought before Geiger interrupted him.

“Ready for phase two,” Geiger stated.

Quinlan’s stomach pitched, but again his face remained expressionless. “She’s only seventeen.”

“She’ll be eighteen next month.”

“We’ve never put anyone through phase two training until-”

“Look,” Geiger interrupted again. “You said it yourself. She’s been on her own for a long time. She’s mature enough to handle what comes next. And frankly, phase two is the only way we’re going to find out if she has what it takes to succeed as a field-op. Otherwise, we’ll move her behind a desk decrypting code.”

“She doesn’t want that.”

“It’s not a matter of what she wants, it’s a matter of where she’s best suited. I’m hearing words like willful, cocky and impatient. It’s time to break her.”

Break her. The words lingered in his mind and Quinlan recalled telling her the same thing once when he first met her. He’d been trying to intimidate her then and it had worked. This, however, would be different. This would be for real. He hadn’t expected it to happen so soon and everything inside him said she wasn’t prepared for it.

Phase one was about learning. Letting her expand her mind. Letting her use it like she’d never been able to before. It was about teaching her body how to defend itself and how to attack. It was about learning how to shoot a gun and making the right decisions. These were the things she’d been ready for.

Phase two training was brutal. Survival training, torture resistance, psychological manipulation. Every agent went through it. Those who survived mentally and physically moved forward, those who didn’t were cut from the program or retrained for another job. Quinlan had been twenty-five, a former army officer, a grown man, when he’d done it.

“Despite her abilities,” Quinlan countered, “in many ways she’s still just a…a kid. You push her too far too fast, and you’ll never get her back.”

“She’ll be eighteen next month,” Geiger repeated as if that made it all right. “We’ve got women in the armed forces, in battle situations, who are handling the pressure of enemy engagement. It’s time to see what she’s really made of.”

Quinlan opened his mouth to refute that even battle conditions couldn’t compare to some of the psychological games that a rookie agent was put through, but Geiger’s expression was closed. He was done listening to any further arguments.

Then the assistant director once more studied the topic of the conversation, assessing her with his eyes. “Phase two,” he said, apparently definite in his decision. “Starting tomorrow. You know the exercise.”

Quinlan did and for a brief moment he wondered if he was going to be sick.

“Up until now she’s been having a little too much fun,” Geiger noted. “Phase two should be enough to wipe the smile off her face.”

With that Geiger moved on and left Quinlan standing alone. He turned to where Sabrina was loading the gun and watched her as she turned around with her back to the target, her arms over her head, the gun upside down. She fired and when she brought the target forward she saw that she missed the head only by an inch.

“Damn it,” she cursed. “Let me try again.”

Quinlan stood there and thought about what tomorrow would bring. He thought about how it would change things between them and why that made him sad.

Then he dismissed his feelings entirely. Sabrina Masters had a gift. That gift could be used to protect and serve her country. It was his job to get her ready to do that. And so he would.

Even if, when it was all said and done, she hated his guts.

Chapter 12

Present

“Please empty your pockets and step through the gate. Thank you. Please empty your pockets, you can use one of the buckets there, sir, and proceed through the gate. Thank you.”

The security guard at Shannon Airport in Ireland watched as each of the people in line followed procedure like docile sheep. He liked to think maybe once, just once, someone might step out of line and then he would have to tackle him to the ground, put his suspect in handcuffs, maybe even draw his weapon. He, Logan Hurley, would be a hero. Stopping terrorism at its origin.

And since the terminal he typically worked housed most of the planes heading to America, he’d be a hero over there, too. They might even want to have a parade for him. He could stay with his cousin Patty in Boston, then go on to New York…

It was the sheets, or what he figured were sheets, wrapped around the body of a woman that caught his attention and brought him back from his daydream of ticker tape parades. No doubt someone at the ticketing counter had already checked the woman’s passport, and again as she passed through customs, but still Logan was suspicious.

How could he not be when the woman was practically invisible to the world but for her eyes. He noted her exceptionally long lashes and thought that she was probably very pretty underneath all the robes and such. Not for the first time he wondered what inspired a woman to dress this way.

But people had their customs. His dear mother wouldn’t be caught out on the street without her rosary wrapped around her hand. He assumed it was much the same for this woman. Still, she had to accept that if she dressed like this she was going to elicit suspicion. And there was nothing in the rule book about not checking a passport twice.

“Step through the gate, ma’am.”

She did so and Logan noted that she wore nothing to set off the metal detector.

“Now, if you would step over here for a moment.”

She didn’t hesitate and immediately raised her glove-encased hands out to her sides already anticipating that he would use the wand on her. It signaled to Logan that she traveled often and understood the procedures. It was also a signal that she was accustomed to drawing attention.

For a moment, a wisp of guilt hit him. She hadn’t done anything wrong but had followed the dictates of her religion and for that she was a suspect? Logan decided to forgo the wand.

“You can put your hands down, ma’am. I do need to see your passport, though.”

He could see the question in her eyes, but she said nothing. Reaching inside her pale gray wrap she extracted a passport and showed him the picture, fumbling a little bit with the tiny book as the gloves appeared to be a little long for her fingers. In the picture her face was uncovered from forehead to chin. He noted the long lashes and a mole above her lip.

“You’re going to have to let me see your face, ma’am.”

She started to shake her head, then stopped. Instead she began to pull down the fabric that rested high on the bridge of her nose until she had revealed the dark mole just above her upper lip.

Once Logan spotted the mole, he figured that was good enough.

“All right, ma’am, you can be on your way. Have a nice flight.” He handed the passport back to her and it disappeared into her robes. As she walked away from him, Logan thought again about her lashes. They really were very long and very pretty.

There were two things that Ali Kahsan knew about airplane travel. Women were always overlooked by security-at the gates, at customs, it didn’t matter.

And the airline food was always prohibitively bad.

He counted on the first being true, and he always ate before he flew.

There were times when he wondered how the Western world, so intent on the safety of its people, could be so easily duped by a simple costume. Not that he minded. Still a challenge, just once, getting through what he loosely termed security, might have been interesting.

For now there was no point in creating such a challenge. He had easily made his way on to the plane. Easily made it past the customs officers waiting in Boston who, because of his costume, didn’t notice his sneer as he read the large Welcome To America sign set against the red, white and blue background over the doors leading out to the airport. And easily made it outside the building to the rows of narrow busy streets where buses dropped off and picked up their charges, and wives and husbands and friends picked up their loved ones.

Amidst the chaos he found the limousine he’d arranged for waiting for him.

Once securely inside it, behind the tinted windows, he removed the abaya, revealing a very American-looking Polo shirt, complete with a pony rider over his heart, and a pair of khakis. He peeled off the fake eyelashes. Plucked off the mole. The gloves, a size too large because they made his hands seem smaller, were tossed aside, as well.

Sitting back against the plush leather seat, dressed in nothing more than a short-sleeved shirt and lightweight pants, it occurred to him suddenly that it was cold. Damn cold. How people suffered through this thing known as winter, he would never know. He thought of his home in the desert and almost sighed longingly. Instead he turned up the heat.

Speaking the clear refined English he’d learned well at Oxford, Kahsan asked the driver for the estimated time of arrival to their first destination. There was something that he needed to pick up before he could proceed with his mission. The driver responded in English, although with a heavier accent, that they had approximately a three-hour drive.

“Have we heard from my men?”

“Not for over an hour.”

Past the designated check-in time. No doubt dead, he concluded. But that wasn’t his concern. Their mission was accomplished. He was in the country now, on the East Coast where he needed to be. He’d originally considered making the trip via a cargo ship, but had decided that the precaution was unnecessary and time-consuming. Given the success of this costume, his calculated risk had proven to be the right move.

“Have we heard from her?”

“Not yet.”

Soon though, he thought. If he’d lost contact with his men that meant they’d been engaged. The government had finally moved on her and should be taking her to the final destination. If she hadn’t been lying to him, she would be able to give him the location within hours. The clock was on. Three hours was going to be a tight fit, but the detour was absolutely necessary. It was his contingency plan. For he was a very cautious man.

“Excellent. Oh, and somewhere on the way if you spot a store of some sort, I think I’m going to need a sweater. Make that happen, will you?”

The driver didn’t need to reply. He simply needed to make it happen.

“You know there are times when you make it very easy to hate you,” Sabrina puffed out as she jogged the last few steps, finally catching up with Quinlan, who had stopped jogging as soon as the motel came into view.

“I told you those cigarettes weren’t good for you.”

She scowled at him. He wasn’t even breathing hard. It had been his idea to pick up the pace by jogging. Which, under normal circumstances, she might have been able to handle. On a flat road, in jogging clothes and socks. And after a full night’s rest. As of now, she’d been awake twenty-four hours and it wasn’t as though she’d done a whole lot of sleeping since the night she’d gotten Arnold’s e-mail. She was starting to feel it, but Quinlan looked as if he could jog another ten miles if he had to.

Bastard.

They made their way into the motel lobby where an older Indian man sat behind a desk with a bored expression on his face. A mini-TV could be heard but not seen leading her to believe it was situated somewhere under the counter. Sabrina heard Matt Lauer talking about the ramifications of computer viruses. Predictably, the name he invoked was Sal Ploxm’s.

She huffed. This time not because she was out of breath. Ploxm’s reputation was getting a little out of hand. Whoever he was, he was just a hacker. Talented, sure, but the world was full of them. She wasn’t certain why she was insecure when it came to some quasi-mythical computer geek, but she was honest enough with herself to admit that she was. Maybe it had something to do with knowing that if she failed, he was only a step behind. But he hadn’t been Plan A. She was. She really hoped Krueger made the right call.

“We need a room,” Quinlan told the man.

The man took in the fact that they obviously had no luggage and smirked. “For an hour?”

“For two,” Quinlan corrected him.

“If you pay cash, I won’t need to see identification,” the clerk told him.

“How much?”

“A hundred.”

A bold move Sabrina thought. The clerk was banking on the fact that Quinlan was really horny. Given her current appearance, which she was pretty sure bordered on sexless, it was an extremely bold move.

Quinlan handed over the cash. “A hundred for three hours.”

The clerk sneered this time, then stared at Sabrina, assessing her. Then he simply shrugged. “Have fun.” He passed Quinlan a large key with the number six embossed on the tag.

They left the lobby and made their way down the paved walkway that ran the length of the motel and stopped at the number six door. Quinlan opened it and they stepped inside the nondescript room done primarily in a beige and brown color scheme. There was a door that led to a bathroom. A table with a TV on it. And one bed.

Sabrina tossed off Quinlan’s coat, leaving her gun in the front pocket, and sat on the bed, testing its resiliency. There was none. It didn’t matter. That’s how bone tired she was. She lifted her legs up and lay back sighing in relief.

“You’re soft.”

“Like Carvel ice cream,” she admitted. “Fortunately for you it isn’t my body that’s required for this particular mission. No brawn needed for hacking a password, for breaking a code or for being fish bait.”

Quinlan was about to say something when he stopped and reached for his phone. He’d had the two-way set to vibrate as just one more precaution.

“Quinlan,” he answered.

Sabrina tried to read his face to determine the nature of the conversation but, as usual, that was impossible with him. Then she heard him say, “sir,” and knew that he must be speaking with a superior. More than likely Krueger.

“Yes, I understand. Let me explain what’s she’s done.”

Sabrina listened to the condensed version of how she might be the biggest traitor ever or the biggest hero ever. Q was giving a very neutral rendition of the tale. She wondered if Krueger was smiling knowingly on the other end of the phone. Probably not. Even with no one looking, the man would no doubt play his role to the end. But he had to be thinking, Yeah, I already know this. What else have you got?

That was what she was thinking on most days. About everything.

“You should know I think it’s possible that he is in the country. This may be… Yes. Yes. I understand.”

Sabrina sat up, sensing a level of tension creeping into the conversation. It wasn’t evident on his face, but his back was a little straighter. Quinlan rattled off the address, which he’d ascertained from the motel’s logo on the back of the key and told him that they needed cold-weather gear.

“We’ll be waiting.” He snapped the phone closed and carefully set it down on top of the TV. She had an inkling the reason he’d been so careful with the cellular was because he had wanted to throw it across the room. Possibly at her.

“What’s going on?”

“We sent agents to the last known location of the cell we’d been tracking via the satellite. They’ve moved.”

“Do you think they know-”

“No. Up until now there had been no evidence to suggest that they knew they had been tagged. Krueger thinks they might be preparing for a strike.”

Sabrina processed that information, understood the message for what it was and tried to evaluate Quinlan’s tension.

“They’re not going to let us finish,” she concluded.

“They’re coming to get us now.”

“Why? Why not at least let us try to finish this?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

He didn’t so much answer as he explained. “Two agents are on their way. If Kahsan is truly ‘in-country,’ they can’t take the chance of having you anywhere near Arnold’s computer. The risk is far too great. They’re going to pick us up and take you to Langley. You can work there under the government’s protection to see if you have even a chance of breaking Arnold’s code.”

“On what? Some prototype? Get real. The point of the prototype is that it’s a lesser version of the real thing. Breaking it could help or it could be a big waste of time.”

“That’s what you need to find out.” He sat on the edge of the bed, looking away from her.

Sabrina shuffled up next to him. This was it, she decided. Krueger had told her to expect it: the moment when he pulled the plug. It was about to come down to whether she would be going after Kahsan on her own or she was going to have help.

She could do it on her own.

But help wasn’t always a bad thing.

Believe the story. It was the best way to sell a lie.

“What about Kahsan?”

Quinlan stood and made his way to the window that overlooked the highway. He pulled the curtains back far enough to see out.

Typical avoidance tactics, she thought, but she wasn’t going to let him get away with that. She joined him at the window. Through the space he’d created all she saw were cars zooming past at high speed. There was only one other car in the lot, which Sabrina suspected belonged to the clerk.

Quinlan was searching for enemies that didn’t exist. At least not here.

“So we’re just going to let him go?” she asked quietly, knowing how the very idea would strike at his soul.

“We don’t have a choice. Krueger was very specific. There’s no time for delays. We have to get you safe.”

“Does he understand what it means to get this close to Kahsan only to let him slip away?”

“We can protect you. We can get you to a computer where you can safely work. We can plan something else.”

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to break Arnold’s test code,” Sabrina argued. “This is Arnold we’re talking about. If his code was simple to decipher, you sure as hell wouldn’t need me. Hoping that I can make some kind of progress in time to track down the people already loose in this country is a pipe dream and you know it.”

That actually could be the truth. Or maybe not. If she had a chance… It didn’t matter, she told herself, cutting off her own ego. Her mission was clear.

“Kahsan is expecting me to make contact. If he doesn’t hear from me soon, he’ll know it was a setup. The reason this guy has been around so long and has been habitually so hard to nail is because he doesn’t take risks. You know that. He always lives to fight another day. If I don’t make contact, if he thinks the CIA has me locked down in some bunker, he’ll assume that retrieving the data is a lost cause. He’ll leave the country.”

“We hope he’ll leave the country,” Quinlan corrected her.

“Is that what you want?” she questioned, confused by his quick acceptance of the situation.

Quinlan let the curtain drop and faced her. His stoic do-your-job-at-any-cost expression also had been dropped.

“No. I want him. But Krueger can’t take chances. Not with your life. Not with innocent civilians’ lives. He’s the one who’s accountable, Bri. If something happens and higher-ups realize it was because he was trying to set up a sting operation, then it’s his neck on the line.”

“Isn’t it the whole world’s neck on the line if we let Kahsan walk away without even trying to take him down?” Sabrina uttered the words and listened to them, as well. That had been Krueger’s point and it wasn’t altogether wrong. Risky yes, but not wrong. It was a bold offensive gesture and if it worked-if she made it work-then the world would be a safer place.

“Geez, Q, you said yourself you’ve been chasing him for fifteen years and you’ve only gotten close three times. If we’re right, and he’s as close as we think he is, one e-mail can have him here at our freakin’ doorstep. Possibly within hours.”

She could see Quinlan was tempted. She could see the need to hunt in his icy gray eyes. Then suddenly that need was gone.

“I have orders.”

Sabrina threw up her hands in disgust, knowing for now the debate had been closed. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that. Because we all know you’ve never disobeyed orders.”

“With good reason,” he countered.

“This isn’t the army,” she disputed, knowing where his ironclad allegiance to orders stemmed from. “This is different. You’re an agent. You can think for yourself. Analyze each situation as it arises. I don’t know why this cell suddenly picked up and moved. It could be as simple as they spotted their government surveillance. God knows they must have been dripping with Feebs, who aren’t always the subtlest bunch. It might have nothing to do with a strike.”

“But it might and if you have even the slimmest chance of breaking that code in time to get us their location, we have to take it. There is no other option, not when we’re playing with lives.”

Sabrina fell back down on the bed. There was no point in arguing any further. He wasn’t going to quickly decide to counter a direct order-if he did it at all. She would work on him again in a while, try to wear him down. However, if in the end she had to break away from him and work alone, she would do it. She had orders, as well.

There was only one last point she wanted to make.

“I meant what I said before. I have no idea how long it will take to decipher Arnold’s prototype encryption codes. It could be weeks, months. And only if that works will I be allowed to move on to the real thing. Which means we could let Kahsan walk away, fly back to Europe, whatever, and it is possible that this ‘lost’ cell is still going to have the time they need to do whatever monstrous thing it is they’re planning on doing. Are you willing to take that chance?”

He didn’t reply. She didn’t think he would and she didn’t lift her head to see his reaction. Instead, she kicked off her sneakers. “How long until the goon squad arrives?” She needed to start planning.

“Shouldn’t be more than two hours,” he replied.

“Just out of curiosity, how long would it take us to get to Arnold’s place from here?”

He didn’t answer immediately, but eventually said, “Forty minutes.”

That wasn’t such a shock. Arnold didn’t know his exact location. It had been part of the agreement he’d made with the CIA. They picked the remote location, then blindfolded him, transported him by what was no doubt a circuitous route and eventually dropped him off on the island, preventing him from even accidentally giving away his location. He agreed to stay put and was more than happy to do without any contact from the outside world.

But based on the weather patterns, the transitional seasons, the position of the stars in the sky, he determined he was somewhere on the East Coast in one of the centrally located states. Forty minutes could mean Maryland, Delaware or back toward central Pennsylvania.

Arnold had also written her that he was on a small island in the center of a river. He talked about fishing to clear his mind. He talked about a rowboat. There were only a few choices of a river that wide that it could support a string of islands within it. The Susquehanna, maybe the Monongahela. Possibly the Chesapeake.

Somehow she would need to get the actual location before the goons arrived. Either willingly or unwillingly. She didn’t look forward to the latter.

Sabrina pushed down the comforter and crawled between the sheets, peeking first to see that they looked reasonably clean before she did. “You should rest,” she suggested. There was no chair in the room and as fresh and alert as he still looked he had to be feeling the effects of the night they had just had.

Quinlan seemed to study her for a moment. Then he must have reached some internal conclusion. He circled the king-size bed, sat and took off his shoes, then lifted the comforter and joined her.

At no point did their bodies touch, but that didn’t do anything to ease the tension she could feel rippling along her nerve endings. It was too hard, she thought, not to remember the very last time they had shared a bed. Too hard not to remember everything that had happened after.

If the stiffness of his breathing was any indication, Quinlan was having a hard time forgetting, too. She was stunned that he didn’t have better control over showing it. Not that he said anything. Neither did she. But they both knew what the other was thinking.

Just block it from your mind, she told herself.

It was a technique that she’d been taught during her training, one that she’d embraced throughout the years. Sometimes as the only means of holding on to her sanity.

If she could block out the memories from her past, she could move forward with her life. If she could block out what her quirky brain sometimes wanted to process, she could pretend she was a normal person.

If she could block out the pain echoing faintly inside her heart at just lying next to him, she might be able to sleep.

Block it all out.

It had been the second thing she’d learned during phase two.

The first, of course, had been pain.

Chapter 13

Twelve years ago

Sabrina danced on the balls of her feet, the gym mat underneath cushioning her weight, as she let her arms shake loose in front of her in preparation for the workout to come. Regardless of whatever else she was learning at Secret Agent U, fight training remained a constant in the curriculum. Two hours every day. Today she expected to be working with Kai, who was her kung fu master.

She’d already mastered karate and jujitsu, and a few other more obscure martial arts, but kung fu was her favorite. There was artistry in the movements that all the disciplines shared but that “the foo,” as she liked to call it, took to another level. The symmetry of the form, the elegant angles the body was required to simulate, all of it was a math freak’s physical dream come true.

Actually, for most math freaks, Carmen Electra was probably a physical dream come true, if the poster in Arnold’s classroom was any indication. The idea of the old man lusting after the woman half his age made Sabrina snicker. For all his genius he was still just a man.

A girl genius totally had the edge.

Sabrina removed her stylishly ripped T-shirt, the various holes giving it a cool look-and tossed it off the mat. That left her dressed in a pair of dark leggings and a white stretch tank top that was more than tight enough to contain what she liked to refer to as her respectably smallish-size breasts. The snug workout clothes gave her freedom of movement and bare feet gave her better traction and balance on the mat. All in all she was feeling pretty good today.

As a result, she decided she was going to kick Kai’s ass. If for no other reason than she wanted Kai to have to say, She kicked my ass, should Quinlan ask about her workout.

Not that she was all about trying to impress Q. Okay, maybe she’d shown off a little at the shooting range, but she couldn’t help it if she was a natural. Fighting, however, was something she’d had to learn just like everyone else who came through the program and she’d learned it well. She’d applied herself mentally and physically, until her instructors proclaimed her to be good. Good wasn’t great, but she was working on it.

That was all she wanted Quinlan to know. That she hadn’t been slacking in his absence. It was no big deal.

She heard the door open and was surprised to see Quinlan enter with another man-shorter and not nearly the physical specimen Q was-right behind him. She suspected that she wouldn’t be working out with Kai today.

Excellent! She’d show him herself what she’d learned. And if she knocked him on his butt a few times in the process, that would be gravy.

“Are you serious?” the smaller man asked Quinlan, as he stared openly at Sabrina. His face was a spasm of shock and disgust.

Instantly, she reached for her hair thinking it couldn’t look that bad since she’d pulled most of it into a ponytail. There were just a few loose curls around her face, but surely it wasn’t disgusting.

“Wait over there and say nothing,” Quinlan said, pointing to the wall closest to the door.

“She’s just a kid…” The man tried again, but stopped when Quinlan glared at him for a prolonged moment.

“Hey, pal,” Sabrina fired back. “I’m going to be eighteen in a few weeks. Cool it with the ‘kid’ talk.”

She couldn’t imagine why her age was giving the guy fits. Maybe he couldn’t imagine someone of her size taking on an opponent like Quinlan. But that was the beauty of the foo. If executed properly, it lessened the impact of size as a factor in fighting, giving smaller, quicker opponents a decent chance. Granted, Quinlan was probably equally skilled in the art. He’d been doing it for way longer than she had, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t hold her own.

Sabrina made a mental note to point out the fact-exactly how long he’d been doing it-as soon as she had him on his butt. It would be both a skill and an age jab.

Dressed in his typical workout outfit-dark loose cotton pants and a dark T-shirt-Quinlan stepped on to the mat.

“Just like old times.” Sabrina smiled, enjoying the anticipation of the sparring to come. She couldn’t wait to see the shock in his face when he realized how far she’d advanced in the past two years. Not that he would be likely to show it. But she would be able to see. It would be there in his eyes. He wouldn’t be able to hide it completely.

She lifted her chin in the direction of the man at the door who was looking at the two of them with a decidedly pinched expression on his face and his arms crossed over his chest. “Who’s the dweeb?”

“He’s observing.”

“What’s his problem?”

Quinlan didn’t turn around to check on him, but instead remained focused on her. “Are you ready?”

“Sure.” She lifted her arms in a ready position and didn’t wait for him to make the first move, but rather moved forward in an immediate attack. He blocked her first strike, but the second landed in his midsection with a little more force than a practice session warranted. She heard a brief whoosh of air, and smiled as she jogged back out of range.

“Sorry. Was that a little too quick for you old-”

The blow ripped across her face with stunning ferocity. It turned her head, and she could feel the blood welling in her mouth as the inside of her cheek was cut against her teeth.

“What in the hell?” she whispered. She wiped the blood from her mouth and tried to swallow the bile in her stomach caused by the sheer shock of what he’d done.

“Practice is over, Sabrina,” he told her, his voice monotone. “This is a new game. It’s called Submit. As soon as you say the word, we’re done. But know that you’ll be judged on how long you can continue to fight without saying it.”

She looked at his face and tried to understand what was happening, exactly what he was saying, but her mind was still coping with the fact that he’d hit her. He’d hit her. Hard.

“Are you ready?”

A chill ran through her body and she found herself wanting to call time-out. Time-out, like a kid would do in the middle of a kickball game when things weren’t going according to plan. But she wasn’t a kid. She was training to be an agent, a field-op. For an agent in the field engaged in physical contact with an opponent, time-out wasn’t an option.

“Are you ready?”

She nodded and held her hands up. He moved fast. So fast that the only thing she was able to process was how much he’d been holding back those times he’d sparred with her. His leg swung in an arc and came down on her shoulder with enough force to numb it. He followed with a punch to her stomach that almost knocked the wind out of her. She staggered back and tried to focus on what she knew her body could do, but this was the first time she’d had to execute the moves while suffering actual pain.

She moved forward to attack, but he countered her moves easily. She tried a side kick, but he blocked it. She tried to swing her elbow against the side of his face, but he stopped it, and her close proximity to him left her vulnerable. Taking hold of her right wrist he captured it and swung her arm around her back. Then with his feet he tripped her, sending her to the mat facedown.

He pushed her arm higher along her back until she couldn’t hold back the squeak of pain.

“Submit.”

She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She thought she’d come so far only to be shown in seconds that she wasn’t even close. She wanted to ask him why it had to be him. Why couldn’t he have sent someone else? Because the pain was nothing compared to her humiliation. But none of the words would come out. All she could do was breathe.

“Submit,” he prompted again.

“Go to hell,” she moaned.

She felt him loosen the angle on her arm slightly, but then he took her pinky finger and began to bend it back against her hand.

“Say it.”

He was scaring her, she thought dazedly. He wouldn’t do what he was threatening. Not to her. No way.

“Say it,” he growled.

“No.”

The first thing that registered was the sound of the bone snapping. The second was the horrible rolling pain that started in her hand and overtook her whole body. Before she could scream, he had another finger in his hand.

“Say it. Now.”

Sabrina couldn’t speak if she wanted to. She couldn’t think, she could barely suck in oxygen, she couldn’t even cry. Only his name penetrated. Quinlan. Her mentor, her only friend. They’d played cards a few nights ago. She’d teased him and made him laugh. And now his knee was digging into her back, her mouth was full of blood from where he’d hit her face and if she didn’t say what he wanted her to say, he was going to break another finger.

The betrayal was crushing.

“Sabrina. Submit. Say it.”

She clenched her teeth and shook her head. The second break didn’t hurt half as much mostly because she wouldn’t let it. Something was happening to her on the inside. She thought of her mother and remembered a woman with flowing hair and smelling of soft perfume, bending down in front of her daughter to tell her that she just couldn’t handle her little girl. She’d been hoping for a friend, and instead she’d gotten another freak. Just like her father. Sabrina had felt betrayed then, too.

She recalled at age nine her father telling her that he was needed on an assignment and would be gone for several weeks, but that she was old enough and smart enough to look out for herself. The first night alone in the empty house, she’d been so afraid. So afraid that she’d actually missed her mother for the first time in years.

Sabrina felt the anger of those events rise up and merge with the anger she was feeling now. She wanted to rail at Quinlan. She wanted to tell him he could break all of her fingers, but it wouldn’t matter. She was tougher than that. She was stronger. Nothing would break her. Not her mother or her father. Not him.

Nothing had. Nothing would.

He didn’t give her any warning before he broke the third finger. Her body jerked against the pain and in response she felt him loosen his grip. She turned her head so that her cheek was resting on the mat and saw that her left hand was free. It had been the whole time, but with his knee at her back, containing her, he’d been safe from any attack.

Not that she could have mounted one anyway. She’d been too lost in the fog of what he’d been doing to her to concentrate on what she could be doing to him.

“Say it,” he said again.

She lifted her hand and made a motion as if to bring him closer. She muttered something knowing it was too soft for him to hear. She felt him lean over her to get his ear closer to her mouth.

“Q,” she whispered when he was close.

“Say it,” he whispered back.

“Fuck you.”

With that she separated the fingers of her left hand in a move Spock would have been proud of and sent them directly toward his eyes. She heard him howl as she made contact and was able to roll until she was on her back. His hands were on his eyes, probably trying to figure out if they were still there and she struck again with her left palm, slamming it into the upside of his nose. The force of the contact sent him falling backward and she scrambled out from beneath him until she was on her feet.

In seconds he was back on his feet, as well. His eyes were red, but undamaged and only a thin trickle of blood escaped his nose.

“You want to fight?” His voice was low and ominous in a way she’d never heard from him before.

She looked down at her hand, saw her fingers bent at impossible angles and searched the room for the T-shirt she’d discarded. She found it on the edge of the mat and where it was already torn, ripped a strip from the bottom. Steeling herself against the pain, she wrapped the cotton around her three fingers until they were immobilized. Using her teeth to hold one end, she tied it off in a tight knot and grimaced as the broken appendages were pushed together.

“Are you ready?” she asked. Her voice quavered, but she didn’t take notice. This time she attacked without reservation, without consideration, without holding anything back. This time it was her speed and her fury that surprised him. Quinlan staggered when she landed a kick to his solar plexus. He stumbled when the side of her foot made contact with his face.

But soon he was moving again and the punch he landed to her ribs was intense. She bent over to protect that side from further assault, but as soon as she did, she made herself vulnerable. His foot came down on her left ankle and for the fourth time that day she heard the sound of one of her bones snapping.

Instantly, her leg caved and she fell to the floor in a heap of agony. Sabrina could feel her heartbeat shallow out and she tried to pant through the pain, fearing that she would faint. Colors swam in front of her eyes until she couldn’t see. So she closed them. Rolling onto her knees and elbows, she tried to focus on shifting her weight to her left knee. With her left hand, she pushed until she could rock back onto her right foot, but before she was able to stand she lost her balance and was forced to put her right hand down. Her broken fingers protested against the weight and the shooting pain that rifled through her body sent her back down to her knees.

She lifted her head then to see where he was, to prepare for whatever attack was coming next. In her current position, she was vulnerable to anything he might throw at her. But he was just standing in front of her, his arms at his sides. His face was a mass of red blotches that she took special satisfaction in. His left eye was beginning to swell shut.

She wanted to laugh. And she wanted to cry. All she did was shake.

He said nothing, but turned and walked off the mat.

“I didn’t say it,” she mouthed. Only she knew he couldn’t hear her. She sucked in some breath and tried again. “I didn’t say it.” The sound was still too faint to carry the length of the gym. He was almost at the door now. But the dweeb stepped in front of him.

“You’re disgusting,” she heard him tell Quinlan. “You feel like a big man now? Do you?”

Quinlan simply reached out and wrapped his hand around the man’s thin neck forcing him against the wall with enough strength that, if he’d wanted to, he probably could have lifted the dweeb off his feet. “Fix her,” she heard him say.

He reached for the door and this time Sabrina dug deep, breathing oxygen all the way into her stomach.

“I didn’t say it!” She shouted it so loud the words echoed off the gym walls.

Quinlan stopped, then walked through the door without looking back. The dweeb turned out to be a doctor. The first thing he’d offered was a shot to kill the pain, but she refused.

The pain was important, she wasn’t sure why, but she knew that it was.

Later that night there was a soft knock on the door.

“It’s open.” It had been left open for the nurse who had been in and out a few times to check on her.

Sabrina wasn’t all that surprised when she saw who it was. She knew Quinlan would come eventually. She was sitting up in bed watching TV. Her hand was casted, her ankle was casted, her face was a bruised mess and her ribs hurt when she breathed too deep.

For a moment they just looked at each other. She saw that his eye was now completely swollen shut and the skin under both eyes was almost black.

“Are you here to say you’re sorry?” she asked. But she knew he wasn’t.

“No. It was a lesson. I was the one ordered to teach it.”

Quinlan walked over to the bed and gazed down at her. Almost instinctively, he reached out with his hand to brush the bruise along her cheek, but she turned her head at the last second so his fingers wouldn’t make contact. She wasn’t ready for him to touch her yet.

Eventually, she would get over that. Maybe Quinlan didn’t understand the other thing that had happened in the gym today, but she did. Before he’d been her mentor. Her idol in a lot of ways. But the hero worship was gone now. What was left in its place was raw. So raw she wasn’t ready to acknowledge it. Not yet. But someday she would. She wondered if he would, too.

“What was the lesson?” she wanted to know.

“There were two actually. The first one is obvious.”

“Learning how to fight through pain,” Sabrina easily answered.

“Fighting through it, accepting it, tolerating it. Some people freeze at the first hint of extreme pain. They can’t work beyond it. It’s not uncommon. Sometimes the mind shuts down in an attempt to cope.”

“Yes, but I’m a woman.”

His brow furrowed in obvious confusion.

“Women have been known to labor for days to give birth. Makes me think that our bodies are naturally designed to take pain. At least when we know there’s a reason for it.”

His head tilted marginally to the left in acknowledgement.

“And the other lesson? You said there were two.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

“It’s okay. I think I’ve got that one figured out, too. Trust no one. Isn’t that CIA credo?”

He sighed deeply and folded his arms over his chest.

“You’re one mean and nasty badass. Want to sign my cast?”

That seemed to startle him. She guessed he was expecting rage and howling. Accusations and maybe even a little spitting. She imagined he came to see her because, even though he wouldn’t admit it, he did feel guilty and as part of his punishment he would stand fast against her fury.

But she wasn’t angry. Not at him. She’d learned something about herself in that gym. Something she hadn’t known before. She’d been suffering for a long time. Quinlan had just brought it to the surface. And in doing so had cleansed her.

“This is just the beginning. Isn’t it?” she surmised.

He took the magic marker she’d held out to him and drew the letter Q on top of the cast just under her toes.

“Yes, it is,” he answered honestly.

“I can take it,” she promised.

His eyes met hers and she saw uncertainty. She didn’t blame him. Until today she hadn’t known what she was capable of.

Now she did.

Chapter 14

Present

“You’re not sleeping.”

There was a revelation, Sabrina thought. It could have been because the sun had officially risen and while the heavy curtain kept most of the sunlight out of the room it couldn’t disguise the fact that it was day.

But that wasn’t her problem.

It could have been because for the past twenty minutes she’d been trying to not think about the man in bed with her and instead, had been trying to come up with a plan to avoid the goons while still managing to acquire the location of Arnold’s computer.

In the end, she decided she could always provide Kahsan with a false address, but she couldn’t disregard the idea that if she had a chance at Arnold’s code, maybe, just maybe, she might be able to break it. Quickly. Then she would have had Kahsan assassinated and given the CIA back their missing terrorists.

Forget getting her job back. There had to be some kind of promotion in that for her.

“You’re breathing too loud,” she told him as an answer.

“You should sleep now while we have the chance,” Quinlan said in reply.

“So should you. Curious that you can’t, either, isn’t it?”

Abruptly, he sat up and ran his fingers through his hair-a telltale sign of frustration for him.

“Want to talk about it?” Sabrina prodded. She turned on her side toward him, her cheek resting in her palm. It was almost funny to watch his face go slightly pale at the suggestion. “Come on, why not just admit it? You can’t sleep next to me because you can’t help but remember the last time. Although I don’t recall either of us doing a whole lot of sleeping on that occasion.”

“I’m not the one with the endless memory.”

“Yes, but some things are unforgettable,” she teased.

“Drop it, Bri.”

She chuckled softly and was somewhat amazed at herself that she was able to make jokes about an event that had so radically changed her life. No, she corrected herself. It wasn’t making love to him that had changed everything. It was the day after that had rocked her world. But that event seemed very long ago. And the hurt that usually accompanied the memories had been dulled to a soft ache. Maybe it was another sign that she was growing up.

“Okay,” she offered. “But for the record I’m not the one getting edgy.”

“I am not edgy,” he said through clenched teeth.

She let that go, but decided that since they weren’t going to get any sleep he might as well answer a few questions that had popped into her mind. “So you divorced the first wife,” she stated. “Was there a number two?”

She could tell that he didn’t see the point in refusing to answer. “No.”

“Me, either. I mean no husband.”

“I know.”

Sabrina nodded. “I guess that would have been in the report. It makes me curious, though, how long has the CIA been checking up on me?”

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “Don’t assume it was anything…personal.”

“Heaven forbid.”

He scowled slightly. Then said, “You were…you are…important to the program, Sabrina. Despite the fact that you left-”

“Was fired,” she corrected him.

“While your skills make you valuable, they also make you potentially dangerous.”

“I get it,” she muttered. “We’re back to me being a terrorist.”

He rolled off the bed in a fluid movement, evidently preferring to stand while they talked. “It wasn’t necessarily about that. You could have been kidnapped. Forced to work against your will.”

That made her laugh. “Have you ever known me to be forced to do anything against my will?”

He smiled faintly. “No. Still, there were concerns. You were routinely monitored.”

“By you?”

“Not always, no.”

Sabrina pressed. “But sometimes, right?”

Somewhat reluctantly, he nodded. “When you went to Monte Carlo,” he admitted.

“You were there?” She couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice. All this time, she’d imagined that the split that had occurred between them had sent them in opposite directions in life. Now she’d come to find out he’d seen her. As recently as a few years ago.

“I was in Europe at the time. You leaving the country was a concern. I was asked to check in on you.”

He’d been so close, but he hadn’t even bothered to say…what? Hello, Sabrina. Long time no see. No, he wouldn’t have done that. As far as he knew, she hated his guts.

She wondered when she had stopped. Certainly, before Monte Carlo.

“I spotted you almost immediately,” he added.

Sabrina thought back to the Monte Carlo trip. She’d targeted the most exclusive casino. Her goal had been to go in, strike quick and make a speedy exit before anyone understood what she was capable of. In Vegas she’d worn out her welcome because she’d gotten too greedy, made too much of a spectacle of herself and her talent. By the time she got to Atlantic City they were already on the lookout. She hadn’t wanted to repeat that mistake in Carlo. She’d also wanted to ensure it would be possible to come back.

“Really? I wore a wig and tinted glasses.”

“Ice blond. Long. I remember. You wore a short black dress and impossibly high heels. Men turned to look at you as you made your way through the tables, but you didn’t seem to notice. They couldn’t keep their eyes off you.”

She got off the bed and circled it so that she stood directly in front of him. “And what about you? What did you think of me?”

“I thought you looked silly,” he stated bluntly. “Like a little girl trying to play grown-up. Then you sat down at a poker table and I watched you methodically take each man at that table for every penny he had. They were furious, while you seemed slightly amused at their expense.”

“I’ve got skills,” she quipped and leaned against the table the TV sat on. Silly. She’d been going for sexy vamp, and he thought she’d looked silly. Of course, it shouldn’t have bothered her, but she was a woman so naturally it did.

“I wondered at the time, why not blackjack. You could easily count the cards. It wouldn’t matter how many decks they pulled from. It was a safer bet.”

“Ah, but not as challenging. With poker there’s more than just brains involved. I can calculate the odds that the cards I’m holding will result in a winning hand. Plus, I can remember every card thrown on the table. You play the odds and more often than not you’re going to win. But that’s where using my brain ends and other skills kick in. You’ve got to be able to keep your cool. And you’ve got to be able to bluff. Sometimes it all comes down to a good bluff.”

“And you’ve got skills in that area, too.”

Sabrina folded her arms over her chest in a defensive move. “You’re like a clock, you know that? What, do you have some internal alarm that goes off every hour reminding you not to trust me and then to tell me about it? I forgot how single-minded you can be. Let me ask you something. Did you ever trust me?” She’d been trying for sarcasm, but her last question had sounded far too sincere.

“Trust no one,” he reminded her, quoting what she used to call the CIA credo.

She dismissed that shallow reply and uncrossed her arms and walked toward him. “I think you did. I think you trusted me. No, I know it.”

“You’re letting it get personal again,” he said softly.

“That’s because it was personal.” She moved a little closer to him, invading his space. She could see the muscles in his jaw tightening. She could see that she was making him uncomfortable. She’d forgotten the pure rush of fun she always experienced whenever she was able to shake the unshakable Quinlan out of his comfort zone.

“You hated it, too. Hated that I had gotten under your skin and you couldn’t shake me. I knew that. But you couldn’t help yourself. You let me deep inside, all the way. To a place I doubt you’d ever let your own mother go. You refused to admit it then, probably still do, that’s fine. But don’t kid yourself. Don’t think for a moment I didn’t know what was happening between us.”

“You were nineteen years old,” he countered. “You knew nothing.”

She stepped closer and saw that he wanted to take a step back. But he wouldn’t. The man was too stubborn for his own good. “Yes, but a nineteen-year-old genius can sometimes be wise beyond her years.”

She put her hand on his chest, felt that it was still solid. She expected nothing less. Her hand rested over his heart and she could feel the even beat of it. Bump, bump.

“Stop it.”

But he didn’t remove her hand, and he didn’t step back.

“I don’t know what it was, Q. The chemistry, the timing or just you and me. But I was different for you. And you know it. That’s why it hurt me so much when it was over. I wonder, did it hurt for you, too?”

He didn’t answer, but she could feel the muscles under her hand tightening and, beneath her palm, his pulse picked up speed.

“Did you miss me after I was gone?” she pressed. She’d forgotten-no, not forgotten-had blocked out the memory of his overwhelming size. She’d blocked out how good it felt to stand this close to him, to feel the heat from his body and know that here, in this position, she was safe from everything except him.

“What did you really think when you saw me in Carlo?” she whispered. As she tilted her head up, her lips brushed against his jaw.

Then with the lightning-fast speed she was accustomed to he pounced. He dropped his head and took her mouth. The rush of heat and pure sex stunned her. She’d had sex before him-a teaching assistant at Harvard who had gotten off on the idea of screwing a genius-and she’d had a handful of lovers since. But nothing had ever compared to Q. There was an intensity about him physically and mentally that lent itself to sex. His tongue plunged beyond her lips in a heady rhythm. And she met his ardor with equal force. This was what it was supposed to be about, she thought drowsily.

There were those who needed to romanticize sex because, for so many, it was just an act. A few minutes of rubbing bodies together that resulted in a pleasurable feeling. But the real thing didn’t need flowers or sweet words or explanations. It was a connection that transcended words and left only the physical.

This had no name. No rules. No boundaries. This was where she and Q lived. She had missed this place.

His body moved and, as smooth as Ginger Rogers, she glided gracefully with him. With his mouth still attached to hers, his left leg moved forward. Her right leg moved back. His right leg pressed into her thigh. Her bottom hit the bed with a bounce. He leaned over and she surrendered eagerly to his size, his strength and the exhilaration of what it meant to be with a man as powerful as him.

“I missed you,” she whispered into his ear. It galled her to admit such a truth, but she couldn’t hold it back.

“Shh,” he ordered.

He pressed her body into the bed. His chest pinned hers and his hands held her wrists to the mattress. For an interminable amount of time, he held his mouth just above hers. She tried to reach for him, but he pulled back and she remembered that this was part of it, too, the fight for control. Her strength matched against his.

Finally, he bent down so that his tongue teased hers. And again the fire was lit. A hundred times over. As soon as they had a taste of one another they couldn’t stand not to have another. And another. Together they were addicted.

He released one of her wrists and his hand followed a path until he was cupping her swollen breast. She heard him growl and knew that he was frustrated by the barrier of clothes. For that matter so was she. It had been too long for them to take this slow. The liquid heat pooling between her legs needed to be satisfied quickly. The only thought racing through her mind was fast. She wanted him inside her, pounding hard and fast and deep. She needed to feel that connection now and she didn’t want to wait for the time it took to mess with bras or belts.

With her free hand she reached down and cupped the heavy erection that was urgently pressing against the confines of his pants.

“Wait,” he muttered.

“No waiting,” she whispered and struggled to reach for his belt.

He reached down, grabbed her hand and again pressed it to the bed. She wanted to howl, her frustration was so keen.

“Damn it, Q.”

He looked into her eyes and she could see the fog of desire in the cold gray irises. He wanted her. Desperately. She knew it deep inside. But he was holding back. He always had, except for that one night when she had caught him off guard.

Sadly, she shook her head. “Why won’t you trust me enough to let go? Just once.”

“Is that what this is about? You want me to trust you?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

His eyes stayed pinned on hers for a moment, then asked, “You think you can seduce me into going after Kahsan?”

It was as if he’d hit her. Only she’d been hit by him before so knew for a fact that this hurt worse. He thought she was using him. That’s how deep his suspicion of her went. The fact that he was right, that on some level she was using him, didn’t enter into it. Because for a few minutes, she hadn’t been playing.

“Get off me.”

When he didn’t move fast enough, she shifted her leg that was pressed between his thighs and pushed her knee to his groin. “You really don’t want to test me right now,” she threatened.

He rolled off her and stood next to the bed and she rolled to the other side.

“You’re right,” she lied as she straightened her sweater. “Cheap trick, I suppose. A woman’s wiles and all that.” She moved toward the window. Looking outside she saw only what she had seen before-cars passing by at high speeds.

“Sabrina…”

She wouldn’t look at him. “If sex won’t work to convince you that now is our best opportunity to go after Kahsan, what will?” She hadn’t been thinking about Kahsan at all. Not the second that Quinlan’s mouth touched hers.

That was wrong. Sabrina could see how wrong that was.

She’d been given this mission to accomplish. She’d taken it on as her personal crusade to right the wrong she’d let happen for the past ten years. Letting a man tied to her past distract her from that was criminal. And she knew it.

“I told you. I have orders. And maybe… I still don’t understand what’s driving you to do this.”

“You mean you don’t believe me when I tell you I want a chance to catch a bad guy,” she clarified, her voice tight as she tried to keep the anger at bay. “Fine. You want some other motivation other than the fact that you and I both know this man is evil incarnate? How about I’m searching for approval? You read my psych profile. My father didn’t pay enough attention to me so I’m forever seeking out male attention and recognition, blah, blah, blah.”

“You’re telling me you’re doing this for your father?” His skepticism was obvious.

She didn’t care. Time was running out. He was either going to be with her or he wasn’t. She needed to know that now. But before he would commit he needed a reason. Briefly, she contemplated telling him the truth. Problem was there was no reason to think that he would believe she’d been chosen for this assignment any more than he believed she had volunteered for it.

“Dad, Arnold, you. Pick one.” She watched his face but his expression remained unchanged. “Still not buying it, huh.”

Rather than answer her, he looked away. “The agents will be here soon.”

“Super. Let me ask you something. Do you know how long it took Arnold to develop the encryption code that you guys decided to use on the satellite data?”

There was a sudden silence in the room as she waited for him to remember how long Arnold had worked as an outside contractor to the agency. When he didn’t answer, she knew that she had made her point.

“Twelve years,” she said. “He’d started tinkering with it when I first met him. Twelve years of development and testing until it was foolproof. It had to be in order to be chosen as the method of security for the isotope project.”

“What’s your point?”

“I’m good, Q. Maybe the best. But I wasn’t exaggerating before when I told you that it could take me months to break his code. Possibly even years. We lost track of that cell that was in this country. They’re gone. And the likelihood is they will stay gone until they either act or the FBI finds them through regular old fieldwork. But Kahsan is here. Within our grasp. Not acting now while we have this chance would be the real crime against this country. I think you know it, too.”

His lips twitched in a half smile. “You’re always telling me what I know.”

“Can’t help it. Occupational hazard.”

“You really want to get him?” he asked her.

“Only because I am so sure we can.”

Quinlan sighed thoughtfully. At that moment they heard two cars pull into the motel parking lot. Sabrina pulled the curtain back and watched as two men got out of their respective vehicles. They had “spook” written all over them.

“They’re here,” she told him. “This is your last chance. What are you going to do?”

Chapter 15

The knock on the door didn’t startle Sabrina since she’d seen their approach. “It’s now or never.”

“Open the door,” Quinlan told her.

She cursed under her breath, but did as he asked. There was only one option left to her now. She was going to have to take out the agents and Quinlan, incapacitate them to the point where she’d be able to make her escape and send her message to Kahsan. Looking over her shoulder, she realized Quinlan was right behind her. His size was suddenly more apparent to her now.

Yeah, taking him out wasn’t going to be a whole lot of fun. Then she thought about his accusation of seducing him in order to get him to cooperate and decided a flesh wound wasn’t a horrible price to pay. Maybe something high and neat on his upper thigh, somewhere a little too close for comfort to the family jewels.

Sabrina opened the door and the two men each flashed identification. They were of equal size and girth, dressed similarly in khakis, boots and ski jackets. One, however, was clearly younger than the other. She backed away from the door and Quinlan nodded. He must have recognized the older of the two agents from the Farm.

“We brought two cars. Agent Patterson will take Ms. Masters, and you and I-” he pointed to Quinlan “-will follow and act as a shield in case anyone tries to intercept. We also brought some gear for you.” The agent dropped a gym bag at Quinlan’s feet.

There was a change of clothes for him and her. Quinlan showed the bag to Sabrina but she shook her head not wanting to take the time to change. For himself he took out a ski jacket and a pair of gloves.

Then Quinlan stood and said casually, “If it’s all the same to you I’ll drive with Ms. Masters. I think she would be more comfortable with me.”

Sabrina glanced at him sharply, but his face showed nothing.

The two agents looked at each other. The younger one, Patterson, shrugged as if to suggest that he didn’t see a problem. The older man concurred. “That’s fine.” He tossed the set of keys to Quinlan who snatched them out of midair.

“Get your coat.”

Sabrina picked up the coat from where she dropped it on the floor. The Colt still deep in its pocket bumped against her thigh. The situation worked to her advantage. With the two of them isolated in the car all she needed to do was take out Q. But as she followed him to the car she had to consider why he wanted them to be together in the first place.

Comfortable, my ass, she mused.

“It’s the silver sedan,” Patterson pointed out.

Quinlan nodded, then tossed the keys to Sabrina. “Why don’t you drive?”

This had her stopping in her tracks. “You want me to drive?”

He looked over at the two agents, who had paused by their car, a green sedan of the same model, to observe the exchange.

“I’m beat. You’re a little more alert than I am. You drive.”

Instantly, she understood. With a casual shrug of her shoulders she circled the car and got behind the wheel. Quinlan was already buckling himself into the passenger’s seat.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” she asked him. She didn’t need to clarify what this was. And she wasn’t sure why she was giving him an out when this was exactly the outcome she wanted. Maybe it was because she knew that he was probably going to pay a price one way or the other for disobeying orders even though Krueger was counting on him to do exactly that.

“Am I sure? No.” He turned his head to study her for a moment. “You better be able to bring him here.”

“He’s waiting for an e-mail.”

“Then let’s go send him one,” he said grimly. “It’s been a while since you’ve had to do this, too. Think you still got it?”

Sabrina smiled devilishly and turned the key in the ignition. “Q, as I once explained to you a long time ago, driving, like shooting, is all about physics. And I’m a whiz at physics.”

“Don’t get crazy,” he warned her. “Just lose them.”

Sabrina pulled out of the motel slowly and waited at the entrance to the two-lane highway for a few cars to pass. As she waited, she considered her options. There were only a few exits off this highway that led to some small towns, most of those towns consisting of a main street surrounded by culs-de-sac of single-family homes. Not the best place to lose a tail. Especially considering the agents following her were no doubt highly skilled in evasive maneuvering driving. Though it was doubtful they had her particular edge.

With her ability to see distance accurately, and her understanding of physics and how the car would react given its approximate weight and the speed at which it was traveling, she always knew just how much she could accelerate through a turn and still make it and also when she needed to brake in order to stop the car before collision.

Quinlan was an excellent evasive driver. But she was better. It was why he had wanted her to drive and how she knew that for all his doubt and mistrust, he’d essentially agreed to help her. For that, she wouldn’t let him down.

“You know,” she said as a car sped past and she was able to pull out on to the highway. “Not only are you going to get into a shitload of trouble for disobeying Krueger’s orders, but all the macho guys at the Farm are going to give you hell for letting a woman drive.”

She glanced over quickly and saw his sour expression. “I know.”

In the rearview mirror she could see that Patterson had pulled out directly behind her. For a time she drove carefully, just a notch over the speed limit and did nothing to raise any suspicions. It was best to let them think that she was on board with their plan, lulling them into a sense of comfort, so that when she did make her move, they would be slower to react.

Twenty minutes later Quinlan was beginning to get anxious. “Okay, you did understand what I meant when I said lose them.”

She flashed a smile. “I’m waiting for the right moment.”

“If you wait any longer we’ll be at Langley. There,” he said pointing. “Take that exit for 95 South.”

“Is that the way to Arnold’s?”

“Yes. We need to get to a small town in Maryland called Havre de Grace, but it’s also the exit we would take to get to Virginia.”

Sabrina hit her blinker and watched the car behind her do the same. Slowly, like a careful little old lady driver, she pulled the steering wheel to her right. She’d slowed down so much that Patterson had been forced to brake. Which was exactly what she’d been waiting for.

“Ready?”

She didn’t know why she bothered to ask because she didn’t give him time to answer. Instead she slammed her foot on the gas and waited until the influx of fuel into the carburetor did its thing. The car lurched forward into a high speed and the sound of tires screeching along paved road signaled their escape.

She calculated the turn at the top of the exit to be an eighty-two degree angle and watched the speedometer. Five more miles per hour, maybe seven. She hit the wheel hard and the car careened around the turn propelled by the acceleration it had going into it.

The ramp dropped sending them onto the busy interstate highway. Checking the rearview mirror again, she could see that Patterson was struggling to keep up. Sabrina glanced at the right side mirror and saw traffic approaching and determined, as the lead car moved closer, the speed at which it was traveling. She checked the speedometer again. Another five miles per hour. She hit the accelerator and watched the needle jump, then she didn’t look at all behind her as she hit the left hand merge lane at full speed barely sneaking in front of an oncoming SUV.

A horn blared behind her. No doubt the guy driving the SUV was furious, but there was no time for apologies. She watched as she quickly came up on a car in front of her. Looking again to her right she saw the hint of an opening between a cherry-red Volkswagen and a Jeep in the center lane next to her.

“You’re not going to make it,” Quinlan hissed, his hands now positioned on the dashboard in front of him-as if that would do him any good in a crash.

“Hey, who is driving?” she barked.

“I’m just pointing out that us dying does absolutely no good.”

Sabrina checked the gap again and swung the wheel hard to the right. The sedan sat on the Volkswagen’s bumper and the Jeep immediately careened off into the far right lane.

Sensing her urgency the Volkswagen also moved to the right and Sabrina was able to leave both cars in a blur behind her. She barely registered the obnoxious gesture she’d been given by the driver of the Volkswagen.

“Where are they?” she asked as she quickly came up on another car. This time she pulled the wheel hard left and the car swerved into the left lane. As soon as she passed a black Mercedes, she scrambled back into the center lane where there was more room to maneuver.

Quinlan turned in his seat and peered out through the back window. “About four cars back.”

Sabrina took in the information and contemplated her next move. Traffic was too heavy on the highway to lose the tail with speed and maneuvering. Eventually, she was either going to clip or get clipped by, another car.

The highway consisted of two sides of three lanes each separated by a stretch of grass in the center. She could cross the median, but the oncoming traffic was too thick to hope that she would make it across without getting hit.

On either side of the highway was a smattering of trees and the remnants of a woods. Sabrina saw a green sign looming about a mile up, which meant they were coming to an exit. Working on the assumption that at the point of an exit the trees would have to be cleared even more to make room for the gas stations and convenience stores that typically occupied that real estate around a highway exit, she made her decision.

“Hold on,” she told Quinlan. “It’s time to take this baby off road.”

Taking her foot off the gas she let the car slow naturally until the station wagon that she’d been adjacent to passed her. Sabrina steered right, then right again until she was on the shoulder of the highway. A guardrail separated the lane from the trees for most of the length of the shoulder, but she could see where the exit sign was that there was a break.

Judging the distance to the sign, and determining the width of the car against the width of the gap in the guardrail, she concluded it was going to be a tight fit. Which meant she was going to need more speed to propel the car through the opening. Once again she pushed her foot down hard and watched the red needle on the speedometer jump. Her hands steady on the wheel, she turned it the exact amount to hit the gap at only the slightest angle.

Mimicking the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, metal scraped against metal as the car was attacked by the guardrail on one side and the exit sign on the other. Then suddenly, the noise stopped and they were on the other side of the rail. The car dipped and heaved on the uneven ground as the first obstacle, a tree, approached.

The still vivid image of the Cadillac from this morning wrapped around a trunk flashed behind her eyes. She turned hard left and ended up clipping a poplar tree, but still the car advanced. Another tree loomed only this time there was a small gap to her left. Then to her right. Then to her right again. It was like trying to drive through a snowstorm and missing the flakes of snow.

“Where are they?” she called out, not for one second taking her eyes off the impediments in front of her. She turned again to miss a tree and felt the back end of the car take a hit. There was a patch of cleared ground to her right so she aimed for that.

Quinlan looked over his shoulder. He could see the green sedan pulling through the guardrail and watched as sparks danced along each side of the car. The agent driving had slowed down too much in an attempt to drive cleanly through the gap, and as a result the drag against the car had slowed it down almost to a complete stop.

“We’re losing them. Get us the hell out of these woods.”

That was easier said than done, Sabrina realized. Her plan had been to drive through the woods to get to whatever road the exit emptied on to. But she’d had to make so many right turns that, instead of running parallel with 95, she was now driving west. She spotted another clearing up ahead and steered toward that, consistently trying to work her way south.

The sturdy vehicle protested the bumpy terrain with squeaks and knocks, but it still moved forward until a fallen log loomed ahead blocking her path. It wasn’t huge, but currently she didn’t have enough speed to get the car over it. She slammed on the brake and watched as Quinlan pitched forward.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“Interesting idea picking the woods. We’ve lost them, but unfortunately we’re stuck.”

Sabrina heard the sarcasm and scowled. Under her breath, she muttered a complaint against all back-seat drivers. Then she switched the gear into reverse. A tree grew larger in the rearview mirror and she stopped at the last second before impact. In front of her she determined the distance between the car and the log, the height of the log, what a set of standard-size car tires might do when they hit it and calculated how fast she could get the sedan moving in the distance left to her. Best-case scenario she only had a fifty-fifty shot of the car getting over the fallen trunk.

Given the situation, fifty-fifty wasn’t all that bad.

She put the car in drive and the sedan lurched forward. The tires hit the log hard and for a second Sabrina closed her eyes. But then she felt the car lifting, climbing over the dead tree. The crunch of the chassis scraping against wood was actually a comforting sound.

The vehicle dropped suddenly as the tires cleared the log and Sabrina could see that the path ahead was mostly free of obstructions except for a few thin trees that she would have no problem navigating.

She looked behind her and saw the green sedan stopped about fifty yards back as the driver struggled to negotiate the bushes and trees in front of it without a whole lot of success. Certainly without any speed.

“Poor Patterson. Beat by a girl,” she sang.

“Stop gloating and move it.”

“Again with the orders. Have I mentioned that I don’t really have to take them from you anymore?”

Still, Sabrina did as asked. The car kicked up twigs and dead leaves in its wake and started to decline down a hill. At the bottom of the hill she saw the expected gas station.

Using the brake generously, she maneuvered the sedan steadily down to the station not bothering to avoid the small bushes, instead plowing over them. By the time she got down to the bottom of the hill and over the curb onto pavement, she could see that she’d attracted the attention of the three patrons and the gas-station’s attendant.

Sabrina hit the power-window button as she cruised past the four men who were currently staring at her with both fascination and horror.

“Traffic was a real bitch,” she said and shrugged her shoulders as if to suggest she’d been given no other choice but to take to the woods.

With that, she accelerated out of the station where she made a right onto the single-lane road. Twenty minutes later, not a single car in sight, she smugly proclaimed that she had lost them.

Quinlan allowed a slight nod of agreement.

“Okay, how were you planning to contact him?”

Sabrina reached for her back jean pocket and cursed. “Shit. My phone. It must have fallen out of my pocket at some point. Damn it, do you how much those things cost? And this one had a camera and everything.”

“You have a phone number for Kahsan?”

“No, a wireless link to the Internet. I could have posted a message that way. What about your phone?”

“It’s a two-way. I have a Palm to connect to e-mail, but I’m not carrying it. We need to get to a computer, fast.”

“I know just the place,” Sabrina said. “You said Havre de Grace, right? I’ve been there a bunch of times looking for antiques and stuff for the house. If I remember correctly, and we know I do, there is a library in that town that should have what we’re looking for. How much time do you think we have?”

“They’re going to be stuck in the woods for a while, but they’ll call Krueger.”

“What will he do?”

“He’ll call me. Let’s get to the library. Once we get the message off, his hand is going to be forced. He might have to consider letting us do this our way.”

She stuck to the back roads until she again found herself driving south. They pulled up into the quaint historic town and after a few turns found the library. Sabrina parked the car and got out. For the first time she saw the damage that had been done to the body.

She whistled softly and over the hood of the car she met Quinlan’s gaze with a worried expression. The paint was ruined and the driver’s side of the car was dented beyond repair.

“Hey, you don’t think they’re going to make me pay for this, do you?”

He didn’t bother to answer, but merely pointed to the doors of the library. She studied his face for a moment and saw a look that she hadn’t seen in some time. There was determination and there was steel.

Quinlan was on the hunt.

She remembered telling Krueger to send her the best. This close to the end, she was damn glad he’d listened to her.

Chapter 16

“How are you going to do this?” Quinlan asked. He’d already given her the information she needed to pass on to Kahsan, but he was curious how she was going to deliver it. “I don’t imagine Kahsan has an AOL account.”

Sabrina sat at the computer and had to connect to the Internet via a traditional phone line. The library had what they called a research center, which translated to a medium-size room filled with three long tables that held three aging PCs on each table. She and Quinlan chose the table farthest from the door and the last computer to the right. They were the only ones in the room and pretty much the only two people in the building at this hour, other than the librarian, of course.

The sound of the modem ringing faintly had Sabrina rolling her eyes. “Some research center. I’m dialing out on a 56K modem. I might as well be back in the stone age. They need a DSL.”

“Be grateful for what we have.”

Finally, a standard MSN browser blinked into focus. Sabrina didn’t waste time with the search engine, but immediately went to the Web-address line at the top and started to type.

“You’re kidding me,” Quinlan said as he leaned over her shoulder.

“Never let it be said the man doesn’t have a twisted sense of humor.”

The Disney World logo came into focus, then slowly inch-by-inch the Web page revealed itself on the screen.

“You’re going to contact the world’s most vicious terrorist through the Disney home page?”

“Not exactly the home page. The message board.”

“Hmm, excuse me. Are you finding everything you need?”

Together they lifted their heads at the voice. They had company. The librarian. A stereotypical elderly woman with her gray hair pulled tightly into a bun, she had an annoying habit of poking her head into the computer room every few minutes and asking them if they needed any help.

Sabrina couldn’t tell if the woman was bored or perhaps suspicious. She imagined she looked like hell and Quinlan was no fashion plate in blacks slacks and a ski jacket.

“We’re fine,” Sabrina told the woman, but she continued to linger.

Then Quinlan’s phone rang.

“Oh, sir, I’m terribly sorry, but we don’t allow the use of cell phones in the library.” She pointed to a sign next to the door that showed a cell phone in the center of a circle with a red line painted through it. “Too distracting for people trying to read and work, you understand.”

She waited for a minute so she could see that he had actually turned the phone off, before she shuffled away.

Sabrina actually giggled. “Our national security system thwarted by a librarian. You’ve got to love it.”

“I’ll take this outside.” He made a motion as if to leave, then stopped, his eyes watching her as the screen continued to load.

“Alarm go off again?” she wondered aloud, feeling his indecision.

She wished she could have said that the look in his eyes was concern over leaving her on her own. But Quinlan knew better than anyone that she could take care of herself. She thought about the next few hours and how they were going to manage Kahsan’s capture or kill when it was clear he still didn’t completely trust her.

He was trying; she supposed she should give him that.

Perhaps bringing him with her wasn’t the best move. His suspicion could end up getting them both killed. In the end, though, it came down to the odds. Two against one was always better than one on one. So she sucked in her breath, gritted her teeth and tried to pacify him.

“All I’m going to do is give him the location you gave me. And I’m going to be doing that in code, so it’s not like you would have been able to follow it even if I was passing on a secret warning.”

Grimly, he turned and left the room with the two-way phone clutched in his hand.

As she stared at the slowly processing monitor she thought back to earlier in the hotel room. He’d been the first to kiss her. He’d been the first to break.

Deliberately, she ran her tongue over her lips, still tasting him there. The urgency in his kiss had been on the point of desperation. As though he’d waited as long as was humanly possible for the contact he needed.

A man didn’t kiss a woman that way when he believed she ultimately would betray him. At least not a man like Quinlan. She was going to have to count on that. She was going to have to have faith that when push came to shove, he was going to believe her. Believe in her.

It might be the only thing that saved their lives.

Finally the message board appeared on the screen and Sabrina logged on with the name she’d given Kahsan earlier. Minnietothetenth was welcomed back and a white box appeared ready for her to type. A primitive but effective coding system allowed her to embed a message into the text. Anyone on the board would read about a recent vacationer who was looking to make contact with a couple she ran into at Pleasure Island, wanting to stay in touch and delivering the promised recipe for her famous chicken casserole.

Kahsan would read something else.

Just as she hit the send button, Quinlan returned. She leaned back in the hard chair.

“Is it done?”

“I sent it. How often he’s patrolling the message board, I don’t know. Where he is and how long it will take him to get to the location? I don’t know that, either.”

“You didn’t set up a method for him to reply?”

She shook her head. “No point. The plan was for me to pass the address then go along with the agent to the location and simply stall until he got there. But he knows I would only be able to stall for so long before someone got suspicious.”

“And you passed along the number of agents with you,” he assumed.

“I told him one,” she answered.

Quinlan swore softly. “He’ll never believe that. He’ll never buy that we only sent one agent to pick you up and deliver you to Arnold’s computer.”

“I told him you. He knows you. He’ll believe that.”

“Maybe,” he allowed.

Sabrina had more confidence. “All of this hinges on the bluff. If he believes that I’m doing this for the money, then he has to believe I’ve kept our contact secret. Since the government isn’t expecting him, there would be no reason to send me with a troop of spooks to Arnold’s cabin. One actually sounds more plausible.”

Quinlan nodded. “Plus, if he’s smart, he’ll check the area upon his arrival and find nothing. No traps, no ambush. That will work to our advantage, as well.”

“And leave us completely exposed.”

He met her eyes. “Worried I’ll miss?”

“No. You know what they say…fourth time is a charm. What did Krueger say?”

“Before or after the shouting?”

“Either.”

“He’s sending reinforcements, but it will take them time before they get here. Let’s move.”

“Sir, you have a message.” The driver had lowered the partition between the front and back seats. He held a cell phone up and Kahsan leaned forward to take it.

“You don’t mind if I take this, do you?” he asked his fellow passenger. Since the question was rhetorical he took the phone and read the text message that was appearing on the small monitor. He was forced to scroll it a few times before he understood the coded message. Then he cleared it and put in a set of coordinates. He passed the phone back through the partition.

“Plug those coordinates into the GPS and get us to that location immediately.”

“Yes, sir.”

The partition slid back into place and Kahsan leaned back in the deep leather cushions. He smiled serenely at his guest. “Well, you’ll be happy to know everything is going according to plan. My dear friend Ms. Masters is cooperating as expected and for an added bonus we’ll be running into an old rival of mine. It will be good to see Mr. Quinlan again. A shame I’ll have to kill him immediately after that, but it can’t be helped.”

The passenger said nothing.

Kahsan sighed, enjoying the softness of the cashmere sweater his man had purchased for him. Winter, it seemed, could be survived in tolerable comfort with the right sort of clothing. He closed his eyes, confident that his passenger would not see it as a slight, and thought about how close he was to securing the data that would deliver to him a ready-made army. One that merely needed to be pointed in the right direction.

For the right price, of course.

There were times that Kahsan wished he’d been blessed with the sort of feverish belief system his half brother had. Considering Kahsan’s superior intellect, who knew what he might have accomplished if he’d been endowed with conviction? Then again, not having a belief system of any kind made things much easier. He didn’t care when the cause he was working for won. He didn’t care when it lost.

Money was his only passion.

What had begun as a family obligation had led to the lucrative career he had today. His half brother, a legitimate prince, had joined a fundamentalist group that stood against the evil Western world. The group had chosen a French embassy in Africa to destroy. A ludicrous choice in Kahsan’s estimation, but a safe one, he imagined.

Their problem had been they had absolutely no knowledge of how to go about accomplishing such a task. That’s when he’d been asked, or rather ordered, by his brother to work with the group. Given his special talent for strategizing, devising a plan had been relatively simple. In return for delivering the plan, all he’d asked was to be paid. His brother, to whom money was only so much paper, agreed to the tune of half a million dollars.

Easy money.

From there, the next step was to seek out other groups who had the funding, but not the education, to blow things up. It didn’t matter who he killed. All that mattered was that he was paid and that at the end of the day he lived…so he could be paid again. But with security tightening as it had in the past few months, it was getting harder and harder to pull off finesse jobs. The job in Milan had been a little on the crude side. Suicide bombers, after all, were so cliché, but they were effective.

And it was so easy to find radicals who didn’t mind offering up their bodies for the cause. That’s why he was here now. The lure of all those motivated, self-sacrificing men he could command already situated inside the United States was too great an opportunity to pass up. With such an army at his disposal, the cost of his services would be astronomical.

He could almost count the money. And then, because it was so much money that he lost count, he chuckled to himself.

It turned out that Sabrina and Quinlan were close enough to the rendezvous point that they could walk. Quinlan took the lead and they made their way through the quaint town, hand in hand like a couple of tourists.

Quinlan led her down a road lined with a smattering of homes. The ones closer to the main street in town were pretty and well kept. The farther away they got, the houses got smaller and meaner looking. After the last house-a one-story bungalow that didn’t look as if it could sustain life-they came upon a dirt path that took them through the woods down an embankment. Finally, the path opened up to what turned out to be a small dock that jutted into the Susquehanna River.

Ninety-seven yards beyond the dock sat an island, which was no bigger than a high school football field. It was covered with foliage and enough evergreens to conceal what Sabrina imagined would be a small log cabin.

“Arnold lived there,” she said, feeling an overwhelming sense of isolation. Even knowing he’d chosen that life, it still astounded her. “How did he stand it?”

“He liked it,” Quinlan assured her. “It was like having a private world all to himself.”

He was right. And that would have appealed to Arnold. For the most part he hated people. He hated having to explain himself. The only reason he had agreed to work with her at Langley was because she understood him on one level, but it had taken months before he truly accepted her. She thought about him living what turned out to be the rest of his life in that cabin and suddenly she wished she had e-mailed him more often.

“I take it the boats are the only way on to the island, that it doesn’t connect to land on the other side.”

“The boats are the only way out there,” Quinlan confirmed. “Unless you want to swim, which I don’t recommend given the temperature of the water.”

There were two boats. A small motorboat that was anchored to one side of the dock and a rowboat that bobbed in the water on the other side. Other than the narrow path they had just descended there was only one way in, a dirt road that must be an offshoot of the main street.

“Only one way in. Pretty convenient,” Sabrina mused.

“Unless, Kahsan comes by water. But that’s assuming he knows he’s looking for an island.”

“I didn’t mention the island. I just gave him the coordinates you gave me.”

“Then we have to assume he’ll come down that road.”

She watched as Quinlan scouted the area, his trained eyes searching for the perfect spot to lie in wait. Trees surrounded them on the hill, but in the dead of winter with no leaves for coverage, there weren’t many that would hide a man his size.

“I have an idea,” she announced.

He turned back to her and waited for her to reveal it.

“It’s going to require you trusting me,” she told him.

He said nothing, but simply shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s not a yes, is it?”

“It’s more like I don’t really have a choice.”

Sabrina figured that was the best he was going to do. Still it made her sad. “I wish I knew when it happened,” she said thoughtfully.

“When what happened?”

She picked up a stick in front of her to give her something to do other than look at him. She tossed it into the river.

“When you became so cynical,” she answered.

He shook his head, then his eyes met hers and he pinned her with his gaze. As if he was daring her to look away. “Your problem is that you have this romantic idea that I was once different. You’re wrong, Bri. The only person I have ever truly trusted was…me.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“That’s not my fault.”

She continued to meet his gaze, searching for the truth. But she didn’t need to find it in his eyes. “No, I know differently. I remember it. I remember it, like it was yesterday.”

Chapter 17

Eleven years ago

“Sabrina, wake up.”

She was in the middle of a delightful dream. She was saving the world and Quinlan was there watching her, telling her how proud he was, telling her that he couldn’t have done it without her. And she wasn’t even gloating. She was just smiling and letting him know that if he wanted to throw her down on the closest flat surface…

“Sabrina.” This time the voice was more forceful and there was a hand on her shoulder to accompany it. At her best she wasn’t a morning person. Habitually, she had to set her alarm for an hour prior to when she needed to be awake in order to cross over that great divide between dead sleep and alertness via a prolonged series of nine-minute catnaps interrupted by shrieking buzzing.

Cracking open a single eye, she stared at the clock that, in her dazed state, she believed had somehow learned how to speak to her.

“It’s three-eighteen in the morning,” she managed to mumble, wondering how it was that the clock had reached out to touch her.

“Get up. Now.”

The arm that had been shaking her was pulling her out of the bed and into a quasi-standing position. She focused and found Quinlan standing in front of her, dressed in black jeans and a gray sweater, looking his typical badass self.

“If this is some kind of drill…”

“We need you. Let’s go.”

It felt like a drill. After Quinlan had inducted her into what he called phase two of her training, it had taken several weeks for her hand and her ankle to heal. But the breaks, purposefully, had been clean and it hadn’t taken much time to get her back into perfect physical shape. After that, phase two had kicked into high gear. The intensity of some of the exercises was almost unreal. She’d suffered a battery of psychological tests, physical tests and endurance tests.

One time she’d been made to stand or squat, not sit, on a two-foot-square raft in the middle of a near frozen lake for over seven hours in nothing more than a leotard. Somewhere during hour eight they figured she’d learned whatever she was supposed to have learned. Or they learned whatever it was they needed to learn about her.

Not that she ever made that easy. Nobody got her quite like Q. He’d left for a few weeks after what she called the “incident,” but when he came back they had been just as close as they were before. If not closer. He might have been stunned by her acceptance of what he’d done to her, but he didn’t show it. And she never explained why it had been so easy to accept.

“Seriously, I am not in the mood for a drill. You kicked my ass today. That ten-mile run took it out of me and-”

“Now, Sabrina.” He reached into one of two dressers that made up half the furniture in her dorm room. Since he’d commented on the decor the last time, she’d added a James Bond poster over her bed. It wasn’t much, but she figured it was a start at personalizing the space. He hadn’t commented.

It wasn’t until she saw one of her bras clutched in his hand that she realized she’d been standing in front of him in nothing more than a half T-shirt and panties. “Jesus, Q! What the hell are you doing?” Reaching around him, she snatched the pink lace out of his hand.

In the second drawer he apparently found what he was looking for and pulled out a pair of sweats, pushing them into her hands. “Get dressed. We need you in the Comm.”

The Comm was the nickname for the communications center. It’s where the science and technology guys received, monitored and analyzed data being communicated from covert operators around the world. She was barely even allowed to know that the Comm existed let alone be needed there.

“Are you kidding me?”

He grunted, signaling his frustration with the delay.

“All right, all right. Turn around,” she told him, shielding her bare legs with the sweats and desperately trying to keep him directly in front of her so he didn’t catch a glimpse of her thong. At one point or another he’d had his hands all over her during combat training, but something about him seeing her bare ass cheeks made her feel ridiculous.

“We don’t have time for childishness,” he said dismissively. But he must have sensed her stubbornness and finally complied.

Tugging on the sweats, she thrust her feet into a pair of flip-flops that were only ever used to get her from her room to the shower down the hall, but they were the closest things to shoes he was going to give her time to find. He found her coat on the floor where she’d dropped it and tossed it to her.

“Let’s go.”

She followed him out of the convent to a car that was waiting by the door. The engine was still running. Technically, they were on the Langley compound, but the distance to the Comm center was great enough that it warranted driving.

“So what’s this about?” she asked as soon as Quinlan hit the gas.

“It will be easier to explain when we get there. But you should know that this was my idea. Don’t make a fool out of me.”

“Okay, no pressure there.” Her curiosity was raging, but she didn’t bother to ask him about it again. If he wanted her to wait, she would wait.

They drove up to a square squat building that was attached to the main complex by a walkway, but this building had its own entrance. It also descended to three levels underground, which Sabrina learned when Quinlan hit the down button on the elevator.

She could feel the tension in the silence and understood that, whatever this was, it was no drill. The elevator doors opened to a long linoleum-covered hallway that had only one door at the very end.

“Any minute now a metal wall is going to come crashing down behind me, right?”

He stared at her in bewilderment.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “Too many Get Smart reruns.”

After that she closed her mouth and followed him down the long corridor. They reached the door at the end and he punched in a code. A beep sounded and they stepped inside to find a small group of men waiting for them.

One was dressed in full military dress-green for army-with enough hardware on his chest to make him somebody ultraimportant. He had a puffed chest and face that looked as if it was carved from stone. Next to him was an assistant director at the Farm that Sabrina recognized. The same man who had come to see her at the shooting range.

Two tech-geek guys, in clothes that had seen at least two sequential sunsets, sat at a panel that took up most of the room. It was basically a big long computer, with four different monitors of information that kept scrolling numbers at lightning speed, and two keyboards that were built into the unit. Their eyes were pinned to the monitors. They didn’t even turn around to look at her.

“Cool,” she said smiling.

The army man spoke first. “You’re kidding me.”

“Sir, this is-” Quinlan began, but was instantly cut off.

“A little girl. We’re running out of time and you brought me a little girl.”

“I am almost nineteen,” Sabrina protested, tired of her age always being a thing. But she quickly shut up when Quinlan wrapped a hand around her upper arm and squeezed with enough pressure to let her know now wasn’t the time to shoot her mouth off.

“Sir,” the AD said, “we’re running out of options. The NSA has gotten nowhere. Our various code-cracking programs are coming up empty. Ms. Masters is exceptional. We should give her a chance.”

If it was possible, the army dude’s face got even harder. Then the AD nodded to Quinlan.

“Sabrina, what we’re about to tell you is classified. I know I don’t have to elaborate.”

He didn’t. She got it. Big secret. Shut mouth.

“One of our assets in Iran made contact. He has information regarding a mobile chemical lab that he believes has the potential for producing smallpox in mass quantities. We need to find the location of the lab and photograph it before it can be moved or broken down as proof of this country’s illegal weapons activity. And then, of course, we need to destroy it.”

“Right. How did he pass the information?”

Quinlan reached for a paperback book that was sitting next to one of the keyboards and handed it to her. The cover indicated it was a crossword puzzle book. But when she flipped through the short pages she could see that all the puzzles consisted of letters and numbers.

“We believe the location of the lab is embedded in the puzzles.”

“The asset can’t tell you-”

“He’s missing. Soon after he was able to get the book out we lost contact. We have no idea how long the lab will stay put, which means time is running out.”

“How long has the NSA had the book?”

“Three days.”

Sabrina nodded. “Dad couldn’t figure it out, huh?” No doubt it was eating him up inside. Heck, if he found out that they’d gone to her as a last resort that might be the final straw that pushed him over the edge.

No, that wouldn’t be enough to do it. But if she solved it…yeah, that would hurt.

“Okay. You want me to read it and see if I can pick up some message coded within the puzzles.” She opened the book to page one, but Quinlan took it from her hands.

“We’ve photocopied each of the pages. You can go through that door.” He pointed to a door that she hadn’t realized was there until he said something. Other than a small handle it seemed to blend into the wall. “There’s a large screen. We can project the pages onto the screen and make it easier for you to read.”

Sabrina glanced at the three men who were staring back at her-the two geeks were still zoned in on the monitors-one was doubtful, one was hopeful, the other… Q was looking at her as if he really believed she could do it.

She wouldn’t let him down.

As confidently as she could in flip-flops, she walked to the door, opened it and stepped into what was a small, brightly lit room. Empty except for a metal stool in the center of it. The far wall had what Quinlan had described, a large screen that took up the space from ceiling to floor. Behind her, she heard a mechanical humming and turned to see that next to the door there was a panel halfway up the wall that was currently sliding open to reveal a glass window. She gave a little wave to the men looking on and tried not to feel as though she was in some kind of five-cent peekaboo sex show.

“How do you want them?”

A speaker mounted in the corner of the room echoed the voices from the other side of the glass. The nasal quality of the voice told her it was one of the geeks. She turned back to the window and shrugged. “What do you mean?”

The geek on the right rolled his eyes as if to suggest her question was incredibly stupid. “One page at a time? Single pages flashed in succession? Several pages at a time? What?”

Sabrina looked back at the screen. “Just put as many as will fit on the screen. When I tell you, move to the next set.”

He huffed and she considered telling him where he could get off, but then she made eye contact with Quinlan. With just a look he conveyed the message that she needed to focus on the task not the geek.

Suddenly, the pages appeared on the screen. They were enlarged to fit on four-foot-square panels. The screen held four of those across and four down so she was looking at the first sixteen pages of the book.

She hadn’t seen the page number on the last page of the book so she asked, “How many pages are there?”

“One hundred and fifty-two.”

Yikes. The combination of letters and numbers in front of her suddenly seemed a little overwhelming. To commit to memory nine and a half screens of similar pages-the only way she would be able to see the work in its entirety in order to find the code-was going to be more than she believed she could handle.

She turned around again to look at Quinlan. This had been his idea. That’s what he told her. And now she knew why he told her. He was counting on her not wanting to fail him. He was right, but she didn’t like being manipulated that way.

“Look, Sabrina if you can’t do it…” the AD began. “Well, no one else has found anything, either. Just try, okay?”

Right. Just try. But Quinlan had more of a you-better-do-it-or-else expression on his face. She turned back to the wall of jumbled numbers and started to focus. Her head tilted slightly to the right as she allowed the numbers to sink inside, as she began first to see them, then to absorb them.

“Next.”

There was an audible silence. “Next,” Sabrina repeated.

“You don’t want a little more time?” geek number two asked.

Without bothering to turn around, she stated clearly, “If I had needed more time I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have said next.”

“Do what she asks.” That was Quinlan’s voice.

Instantly, the screen was replaced with a new set of pages. No doubt the geeks were peeing in their pants with fear. Quinlan could do that with just a few words.

Again, she let herself absorb the patterns in front of her. Left and right, up and down, she committed the position of the symbols both alpha and numeric to memory. Then with that memory of the first screen, and now the second screen, she asked for screen number three.

“Next.”

This time she heard an incredulous sigh as opposed to a huff. “This is ridiculous and a waste of time…” Mr. Army muttered.

“You know, not for nothing,” Sabrina called out, “but a little encouragement here wouldn’t be a bad thing. Next.”

The screen turned and silence loomed. So quiet. So tense. Her focus intensified as the challenge to hold the positions of the previous pages in her mind while adding the new pages became harder. “Next.”

An ache formed behind her eyes, but she ignored it. Something was there. A pattern. She could see it. She closed her eyes and brought the other pages into focus in the dark. Then she opened her eyes to the light and the screen in front of her.

“Go back two screens.”

She could almost feel the geeks’ cynicism leaking through the glass. But the screen changed and she was looking at the pages that she expected.

“Here,” she mumbled unconsciously. “I can see it…it’s because…the last and then again…wait…that’s why…two.”

And just like that it became clear to her. Like staring at one of those fuzzy pictures long enough until you saw the real picture beneath. “Go three screens forward.” She looked at one of the pages expectantly, saw what she knew she would see and smiled.

“One more screen forward. Now back five.” She turned around and her smile, she knew, was triumphant. “I got it.”

She could see that they still doubted her, but she didn’t care. She got it and for the first time she understood the power of the gift she’d been given. If she wasn’t mistaken she was about to save someone’s life. She walked back through the door. “Someone give me a pen and paper.”

Quinlan quickly pulled out a pen and a small pad from his pocket. “You’re like a Boy Scout, you know that?” she teased.

She wrote down a series of numbers on the first page. Then she turned the paper over and wrote down another set.

“That’s what got my dad,” she explained, although she doubted they would understand. “He was looking for a single pattern. One set of coordinates. But there are two patterns. The first is complete. It’s a phone number. The second is what you believed it would be, a set of geographic coordinates, but it’s incomplete. My guess, this asset, he’s no dummy. He wants you to come get him first, then he’ll give you the missing piece.”

The three men stared down at the numbers then looked at one another.

“I’m right,” she insisted. “Call the number.”

“This number could lead to anything,” Mr. Army grumbled.

“Call the number,” she told them. “What have you got to lose?”

That seemed to convince the AD. There was a phone on the panel. In consideration to her he put it on speaker and punched in the number she had given him. They waited. It rang. Then someone picked up.

“It’s about damn time.” The voice was accented, but the words were English as if the man on the other end of the line knew that the people dialing the number would be speaking English, as well. “Where the hell have you been? I thought you CIA were supposed to be smart. Three days!” the voice on the other end of the phone railed. “It doesn’t matter now. You found this number, then you know. You get me out and I give you last piece of puzzle. Yes?”

The AD picked up the phone at that point, his eyes pinned on Sabrina. He was looking at her as if he was impressed, but also as if she was a freak. “Yes,” he returned. “Tell us where you are.”

With that, Quinlan took Sabrina by the arm and led her out of the room. She’d served her purpose and it was time to go. But before she walked back into the hall, she motioned to the geeks. “Hey, when you tell this story, and you will, tell my dad it only took me twenty-three minutes and five seconds.”

Quinlan pushed her out the door then, her flip-flops tripping her up a bit. As soon as the door was closed behind her she flung her arms into the air.

“Holy shit! Did you see that? Did you see that? It just came. I mean I used to do puzzles all the time. My dad was always throwing that stuff at me. Since I was about three. But this, it was like I could just see it, you know. Like a goldfish in a clear bowl it was that obvious. And did you hear that guy…? What took the CIA so long,” she quoted. “That’s ’cause you waited three days to get me, that’s why.”

Quinlan stopped walking then and turned around. She couldn’t believe it. After everything that happened he almost looked bored. “Don’t you get it? I made you look pretty good back there. Mr. Army is going to say, ‘Boy, that Quinlan, he really had a great idea.’”

“Mr. Army?”

“You know. Stone face.”

Quinlan’s brow lifted in understanding. “Mr. Army is one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

“Oh. Well, he was entirely ungrateful. He didn’t even say thank you or anything.”

“He doesn’t have to. That’s your job. That’s what we brought you here to do.”

“Yeah, but come on, twenty-three minutes…”

“You don’t get it, Bri. Yes, I’m glad you were able to break the code. I was glad that I had the idea to bring you in, but only because it worked. If you think I’m going to sit here and stroke your ego and applaud your success like you’re some kind of star athlete you’re wrong. This is the work. This is what we expect from you from here on out. Only next time, we’ll expect you to get the job done in twenty-two minutes.”

His words robbed her of her enthusiasm, but at the same time they instilled her with something else-purpose. She had a job. She had work that she needed to do from this point forward. It was pretty heady stuff.

To lighten the mood, she shrugged a shoulder. “Okay. No celebrating after a big score. I get it. Act like you’ve been there. That’s what the classy football players say.”

His mouth turned down a little. “This isn’t about celebration. It’s about understanding your role in this agency.”

“Q, relax,” she returned, walking up to him and then moving beyond him down the hall. Over her shoulder she told him, “I know my role. And I’m ready to do whatever is asked of me again. Only next time in twenty-two minutes.”

She saw him smile and she smiled back. Then as he caught up with her, he said something that truly stunned her.

“I knew you could do it. I knew it.”

It was the greatest applause she had ever received.

Chapter 18

Present

Sabrina heard the sound of a car turning down the road and tightened the oversize overcoat around her. She reached her hands in the pocket and circled the butt of the Colt Defender. If all went well, she wouldn’t even have to pull it out of her pocket. Just lift the weapon even with Kahsan’s chest and fire.

If she missed-not likely-or Kahsan managed to survive the first shot-more likely-and returned fire, Quinlan would take the next shot. It was a simple plan. The one unknown factor was how many men Kahsan would be bringing with him. But regardless of how many there were, they were the secondary targets. Kahsan died first. It was what they decided. After that, it would simply be a matter of getting out of this alive.

The front of the car came into view. Sabrina saw black and surmised that it was a limo. It had difficulty with the rough terrain, but after successfully navigating a few ruts, it stopped some twenty feet away.

The temptation to look over her shoulder for one final check on Quinlan’s position was intense, but she ignored it and instead, kept her eye on the target. The driver’s door opened and a large man with dark eyes and dark hair stepped out of the car.

Not Kahsan. Not polished enough.

Then the back door opened and she saw someone struggling a bit to get out of the car. The first thing she spotted was a pair of long denim-covered legs, which flailed about until the feet finally found the ground and the person was standing.

It was a kid. No more than sixteen or seventeen. Tall, lanky, with large pimples that covered his face. At least the part of his face that wasn’t covered with a gray slab of duct tape. His arms were pinned behind his back.

Who in the hell…? Sabrina wondered, but there was no time for further thought when another man slid out of the car and stood directly behind the boy. It was clear that he was in control of the boy’s movements.

“Why, Ms. Masters…we finally meet.”

The voice behind the boy was smooth, cultured, with more than a hint of English accent. Exactly what she expected someone who had been educated at Oxford to sound like. She had no clear view of his face, the boy almost completely obstructed him. So he couldn’t have been that tall or that broad.

“Kahsan.”

But who was the damn kid? And why the hell did Kahsan think he needed a hostage? From Quinlan’s position, he was blind to what was happening right now, and more likely he was probably wondering why she hadn’t yet taken her shot.

“Who is your friend?” she called out. “And why do you have him trussed up like some kind of goose?”

Kahsan’s hand moved in front of the kid’s face and in a single motion he pulled the tape off his mouth. The boy shouted with pain, as he had no doubt been relieved of the few chin hairs he possessed.

“I believe you’re going to be excited to meet my new friend, Ms. Masters. He is, in fact, your greatest competition. Sabrina Masters meet Sal Ploxm.”

A sinking feeling started in her stomach until it hit her toes. “I think my pride is a little wounded,” she announced, even as she tried to formulate her next move. If he thought he had the location, plus someone who could hack the computer and break Arnold’s code, then she was clearly expendable.

The question now was why was she still standing?

“You have to understand it’s not that I don’t trust you… Well, actually it is.” He chuckled at his own joke. “Please toss away your gun.”

Her hand instinctively tightened around the weapon. She could lie about having one, but he wouldn’t buy it and the lie would hurt her credibility with him. She looked to each side of him to see if there was some kind of angle that she could use, but there was none. Any shot she fired at him, she risked taking out the kid instead. The kid who now had snot running down his nose that he couldn’t even wipe away with his sleeves.

This was the legendary Sal Ploxm? She had to say she was a little disappointed.

“Your gun, Sabrina.”

“You understand what I’m doing here is a show of faith. I have no quarrel with you, Kahsan. I only want my money.” Sabrina pulled the gun slowly from her pocket and tossed it on the ground a few feet in front of her.

“That’s excellent. Now, where is our friend Mr. Quinlan? You have to know how excited I am to be reunited with him.”

They had worked out a lie as a secondary plan to taking him out instantly, but already she knew it wasn’t going to play out. Every decision before his arrival had been based on the premise that he needed her. Only now he had options.

“I killed him,” she said, for the moment sticking with the script. “Once I had the location of Arnold’s computer I didn’t need him anymore. I figured it would be less hassle for you if I took him out.”

The kid was pushed a few steps forward and Kahsan’s face came into view over his shoulder. Dark eyes, latte-colored skin, cultured expression. Handsome actually. She wasn’t surprised. She’d always figured the devil had to look good, otherwise he wouldn’t be so tempting.

He made a tsking sound and pouted his lips. “Really, Sabrina. You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? You, killing your former mentor? Oh yes, I know all about it. How he plucked you from Harvard obscurity, much like I plucked this young fellow from Brookfield, Connecticut. Doesn’t that sound like such a charming place to be from?”

He wasn’t going to buy it and he wasn’t going to give Quinlan a shot. It was time to change the play, Sabrina realized.

“You’re right. Of course. I think it’s time to end this game. He’s in the boat.”

Kahsan spoke a few words in Arabic to the driver that Sabrina didn’t have to interpret. In seconds the driver was standing on the dock. “The smaller boat,” she told the driver. “Under the tarp.”

The driver lifted the tarp and Quinlan came to his knees.

“The gun,” the driver commanded, and Quinlan was forced to drop it in the river. The driver backed off and let Quinlan get on the dock then to the dirt road. Sabrina turned around and smiled at him. His expression was closed, but she knew what he was thinking. She only hoped that he had enough sense to get beyond his first instinct.

“Check the rest of the woods. Make sure there is no one else,” Kahsan ordered his driver. “Then find a spot and stand guard.”

The driver moved off and Sabrina took a few steps back toward Kahsan. He moved the boy slightly to the side and she could see the gun that must have been pointed at the boy’s back was now aimed at Quinlan.

“You gave him up awfully quickly,” Kahsan noted with a hint of amusement.

Sabrina turned to him and kept her hands wide so that he could see she wasn’t going to attempt any sudden movements. “What you don’t realize, Kahsan, is this little game I’ve been playing is twofold. Yes, I want the money. Still do. And if you think this kid has a chance in hell of hacking into Arnold’s computer-forget actually breaking Salinski’s encryption code-you’re wrong. But if you want to give him a shot that’s fine by me. Because the other thing I get is…revenge. Ten long years I’ve waited for a chance to meet Quinlan again. Ten years of hate. Ten years of anguish. You said you heard he was my mentor. Did you also know that he was my lover?”

She watched the expression on Kahsan’s face change slightly. Believe the lie. Sell the story. And focus on the target.

“He was,” Sabrina continued, even as she made her way closer to Kahsan, but not so close for him to feel threatened. “He made me fall in love with him. He seduced me. He fucked me for, I swear, twenty-four hours straight. Then the next day, do you know what he did? He introduced me to his fiancée. Some senator’s daughter with blond hair and fake white teeth. I was a kid, not much older than this guy. I lost my heart, then my focus, then my job.”

“So sad,” Kahsan said without sincerity. “But I’m tired of the soap opera.” He raised his gun hand toward Quinlan’s heart.

“Wait!” Sabrina stopped him abruptly. Immediately, he turned the gun toward her in preparation for some kind of attack, but she merely smiled. Sinisterly, she hoped. Calming her nerves, she focused on what she had to do. She had one chance to get this right and one chance only.

“I want to do it. I didn’t have the chance before you came. Now, I do.” She had covered enough distance to be standing over where she had tossed her gun and in a smooth, fluid movement used her sneaker-clad foot to pop one end of it up and then the other foot to kick it back into her hand.

Kahsan retrained his gun on her, but Sabrina turned her back to him and aimed straight at Quinlan’s head.

“You really thought I wanted to be some kind of hero?” she asked him, her voice as hard as she could make it. His expression continued to give nothing away. “You used me, then threw me out like so much garbage. Then the U.S. government did the same thing. Any loyalty I might have felt toward you and America died that day. So I set it all up. I was the one who made contact with Arnold to let him know that I wanted to help him with his work. I was the one who came up with the plan to contact Kahsan, and I contacted the CIA knowing they would send you. Only you. I did all of it so I could have this moment. How does it feel, Q? To know you’ve been betrayed.”

Sabrina lifted her hand, walked a few paces to the left, found the angle she’d been waiting for and fired.

There was a noise, then he collapsed to the ground and she watched as a pool of blood spilled from the wound at his head.

Coolly, even though her heart was pounding fiercely in her chest, Sabrina turned back to Kahsan. The boy’s eyes were wide and no doubt he was going into shock if he wasn’t already there. Kahsan still had his gun trained on her. She tossed the Colt behind her as another show of faith.

“Now, are you ready to go get the information you want?”

Kahsan looked past her to Quinlan’s body. His expression was suspicious, his eyes narrowed to slits, but he continued to stare at the body until something, no doubt Quinlan’s stillness, seemed to satisfy him.

Then again it could have been all the blood he was losing from his head.

“If you think this means I trust you…” he began.

She forced herself not to look at the body. “I don’t give a damn if you trust me. I want the money. The sooner the kid tries and fails, the sooner you know you have to pay me to get what you want.”

“The boat.” He pointed to the motorboat as opposed to the rowboat. Sabrina walked in front of him, right past Quinlan’s motionless body, and onto the dock. She jumped into the boat, found the key in a box on the floor, and once Kahsan and the kid were safely on board, started the engine. Kahsan untied them from the dock and she pushed the throttle forward driving them deep into the Susquehanna toward Arnold’s tiny kingdom.

She didn’t once look behind her. But mentally she sent a silent message.

Please understand, Q. Please understand what I did and why I had to do it.

Chapter 19

Ten years ago

His head hurt. Quinlan looked down at the glassful of whiskey and thought about how this was going to make his head stop hurting.

“Of course, it’s also probably going to make it hurt worse tomorrow,” he told the empty apartment.

That didn’t stop him from taking another sip. He’d just gotten back from what had been a bitch of a mission, a failed mission, and he needed to forget. He’d been close. Maybe as close as anyone had gotten to that bastard Kahsan. He was in the right country, the right province and the right city. He had an address. He had been a step away from taking him down…then the explosion.

Six of his men were dead. The only thing that had saved him was that he’d been in the car radioing the location to his backup team. The explosion had been destructive enough to take out the entire apartment building, deadly enough to send five civilians who had been walking by to their graves and strong enough to send his car tumbling end over end until it landed upside down.

His body was nothing more than a mass of black, purple and yellow bruises.

And his head hurt.

A knock on the door surprised him. Only his immediate superior knew he was in the country. No. Someone else would know, too, by the movement in the apartment directly above her.

“Go away,” he mumbled. She didn’t hear him.

He heard a few clicks and then the door was open. Sabrina walked into the room and closed the door behind her.

“It was open.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

She held up a tiny tool that he recognized as standard lock-picking equipment. “I’m getting pretty good with this thing.”

“Go away, Bri,” he muttered, but again she didn’t hear.

“I heard you moving around,” she said, pointing to the ceiling. “Usually, you stop by to say hello. How come all the lights are out?”

She reached for a switch on the wall next to the door and the living room was suddenly illuminated. He heard her gasp and figured she got a good look at his face.

“What happened?”

He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to see in his mind the bodies of his men, who were positioned at the front entrance of the building, flying through the air on the way to their death.

On some level she must have understood that because she didn’t ask him the question again. Instead, she walked to his kitchen and found a glass in the cupboard and added some ice cubes. He could hear the tinkle of the cubes hitting the bottom of the glass and for some reason the sound was comforting. Then she walked over to the Jack Daniel’s bottle on the counter and poured herself a shot over the rocks.

“You’re too damn young to be drinking.”

“I’m going to be twenty next month,” she said in answer. She came back into the living room and pulled the ottoman up close to him. “Relax, it’s not like I drink all the time.”

“Bad habits can be a hindrance. They should be avoided.”

“You’re drinking.”

“Yeah.” He was too tired to fight.

“Besides, in this case I’m only doing it because you look like you can use some company.”

“I don’t look that way at all,” he countered. He couldn’t possibly look that way when all he wanted was to be left alone.

“No, you do. I look a little harder than most.”

He met her eyes then, such a vivid green, wiser than her years. Not smart. Wise. That had happened in the past four years she’d been part of the program. Somehow she’d gone from being a brilliant kid to a wise and brilliant woman.

When the hell had that happened, he wondered. It didn’t matter. It was done.

Between her fresh face and that wickedly smart brain, she was going to make a hell of an operative. Suddenly his insides clenched as the thought of seeing her body flying through the air occurred to him.

“You know they’re talking about graduating you.”

“I know,” she said and took a sip of her drink. Then made a face. “How do you swallow this stuff? Yuck. I’ll stick to light beer, thank you.” She put the glass aside on the floor.

He would have smiled, if he’d had the energy or the inclination. At the very moment he was becoming sentimental about her growing up, he was reminded how young she still was. Still in so many ways a kid. And in so many ways…not.

His eyes fell to the gray T-shirt she wore, and he could see that her small high breasts were unfettered. She’d matched the cotton shirt with a pair of jeans that emphasized her long legs, but he could see that she hadn’t bothered with shoes. Just a pair of white ankle socks that, for some reason, he found incredibly sexy.

Yeah, he thought. She was sexy. Previously, anytime the idea had crept into his brain he’d squashed it like an intruding spider. But tonight he ached, everywhere, and his head was starting to become a little fuzzy from the alcohol.

And his girl was sitting in front of him with her perky smile and white ankle socks.

So he let it happen. He let himself react to her as he’d never allowed himself to do before. What would it hurt? It wasn’t as though he would make a move. It wasn’t as though she would even know what a move was at her age. A few harmless fantasies played out in his head and a few not so harmless ones, too, as she rambled on about the next phase of her career.

“I really want to be out in the field, but I’m getting some pressure from Arnold to stay and work with him. It’s not like I don’t care about his projects, but I really think I can do more out there. You know?”

Her lips on his chest. His fingers in her hair pushing her mouth lower and lower until she was taking his erection deep into her soft, wet…

“Q? You still alive?”

“Huh?”

“You were staring at my mouth.”

He shook his head a little in an attempt to remove the buzzing he couldn’t seem to shake. “No, I wasn’t.” He tossed back the rest of his drink and Sabrina had handed him her discarded glass. It was dangerous. He knew it was dangerous, but his whole life was dangerous. He took another sip, then another until it was all gone. He set the glass aside.

“You should go.”

She shook her head and a curl bounced across her cheek. Without thinking he reached out and let the tendril circle his finger like a cat’s tail might curl around its master’s leg. She should have pulled away, but instead he saw her lean forward, her hands now resting on his thighs.

“I think you want me to stay,” she told him, even as her hands stroked higher up his thighs.

He reached down and captured her wrists, pinning them in place. “You don’t want to do this. Not tonight.”

“Why not tonight?”

He leaned his head back on the chair so he wouldn’t have to look at her face. The face that had been part of his life for so long and had somehow imprinted itself on his brain so that he could picture it at the oddest times. Like when he thought he was going to die.

“I can’t fight you. Not tonight.”

“You’re always fighting, Q. Why don’t you stop fighting for a little while?”

Her trapped hands moved beneath his grip, her fingers squeezing his legs with enough pressure to make him forget every ache in his body but one.

His brain railed at him. His common sense told him to get the hell out of the chair, but his body…it betrayed him. Quinlan opened his mouth and shut it. Then he opened it again as the only thought left spilled out.

“I can’t.”

Her hand escaped his prison and found the center of him where he was hard. He glanced down at his lap, his erection obvious through his jeans. He hadn’t realized. Hadn’t known that she could see his reaction to her. It would have been embarrassing if the sight of her touching him hadn’t been such a turn-on.

“I think you can,” she whispered to him softly. Then she was moving into his lap, gently shifting her weight onto his leg, and placing soft kisses over the bruises on his cheek.

She felt so good. So damn right in his arms. But he couldn’t let this happen. For so long he hadn’t let it. Again, he stopped her, this time by cupping her face in his hands.

“You don’t understand,” he whispered, even as his hips flexed a little to bring his erection into contact with her thigh.

But rather than shy away from the embrace she seemed to snuggle deeper into his body. “I understand more than you think,” she told him. “I understand more than you do. Let go, Q. All you have to do is let go.”

Her mouth found his and, before he could react, her tongue was inside, stroking his with an urgency that masked any inexperience. Let go, she said. He wanted to do that. He wanted to let go and crawl deep inside her body where she’d have to hold him and give him the kind of peace that he craved.

No, he railed internally. He’d never done this, never lost this kind of control. People who did couldn’t make it in his world. His world was about control and discipline and order and… God in heaven, her mouth.

She pulled away from him, but not before she nipped his bottom lip. “You’re still fighting,” she murmured and moved to his neck where she found the soft and vulnerable lobe of his ear. Then she bit down. Hard. “Good,” she laughed softly in his ear before she ran her tongue along the shell of it. “You’ll be graded based on how long you can go without saying the words…I submit.”

He wrapped his hand in her hair and tugged so that his eyes bored into hers. “This isn’t some game.”

“Isn’t it?”

That pissed him off. The fact that she sensed his weakness and was using it angered him on a level he couldn’t remember ever feeling before. He caught her up in his arms and stood, but there was nothing romantic about the way he hauled her across the room and tossed her down on his bed.

“You want this?” he barked, even as he reached for the snap of her jeans and started pulling them off her legs.

She didn’t shy away. She didn’t demur. She merely helped him by kicking them the rest of the way off.

That pissed him off, too.

He crawled onto the bed and kneeled between her legs forcing her thighs wide. His hand ran down over her exposed flat white belly then over her thighs. Not gently but with the kind of possession that a girl her age would never have understood. Still, she didn’t fight him.

Reaching down he undid the buttons on his own jeans and lowered them just enough to free his erection. He wrapped his hands around her hips and pulled her toward him and up his body. Then seeing the purple lace panties that were in his way, he tore them from her hips. She was open to him, her buttocks resting on his thighs, his sex just at the gate of her slick wet heat.

His plan had been to force himself inside her, high and rough so she would know how far from a game this was. He was so damn aroused that with a few strokes it would be over, and she wouldn’t have come close to finding any pleasure from it. That was what he wanted. She would leave him then, maybe hate him a little and that was what he wanted, too.

I look a little harder than most.

Her words echoed in his ears and he realized that wasn’t the problem. The problem was she saw too damn much.

“It’s okay,” she murmured then, breaking the silence of anticipation.

There it was again. He could see it in her eyes that she knew what he’d planned, and probably why, too. Just to be perverse he did the unexpected.

“Take off your shirt.”

Instantly, she lifted the shirt over her head and flung it away. She was completely exposed to him now. Her body laid out like some kind of sacrificial gift, while the only exposed part of his body was his hard cock. Out of some twisted level of respect he shrugged out of his dark T-shirt and threw it aside, as well.

Then he stared down at the body she’d unveiled. Her breasts were high and firm, he knew that already. But her nipples were impossibly tight given the fact that he hadn’t even touched them yet or taken them into his mouth.

Bending over her, he could see her tilting her chin up, thinking that maybe he would kiss her now, but somehow that seemed too personal, too intimate for what he wanted this to be. Instead, his mouth covered her breast, and he pulled her nipple between his teeth, holding her still for some strong sucking.

Her back arched, higher and higher, as his mouth got more and more demanding. Sighs and moans filled the room, all of them hers. When he lifted his head he could see that her nipple was swollen and colored to a deep brown. His tongue lapped at it once, and her whole body shivered in reaction.

Legs that had been spread on either side of his hips lifted and squeezed his sides in urging. His erection brushed against the soft hair that guarded the center of her body. He was done waiting.

“Behind you. In the drawer.”

She reached back over her head and fumbled with the knob on the drawer of his nightstand. After a second she was able to open it and reached inside for a small box. She pulled the box out and dropped it on the bed next to her. Then she found a small foil packet inside and ripped it open with fingers that he could see were shaking.

“Put it on me.”

She looked up at him, her expression uncertain. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again there was nothing left but determination and need and desire. Desire so raw, he thought that the look in her eyes alone would be enough to get him off. With disciplined abs, she lifted herself into a half crunch and covered him with the condom. Then slowly, deliberately he knew, she lay back down on the bed in offering.

She had to know. She had to know what it did to him to see her like this. And because she did, it angered him all over again. He thrust once, and sent himself deep inside her body. He heard her high-pitched gasp, felt her wet walls close around him, trying it seemed to protect her body against his invasion, but he was too strong and too damn needy to be denied.

He stilled himself for a moment, his natural sexual instincts taking over, as he allowed her to accommodate his thick length. But then she was moving on him, twisting her body in an effort to take more, and pumping her hips feverishly in an effort to find her own pleasure rather than waiting for him to give it to her.

It unraveled him. In seconds their movements fell in sync as he thrust and she pushed. As he pulled and she lifted. His hands dug into her firm ass cheeks and squeezed them as hard as the inner walls of her body squeezed him. He felt her start to tremble around him, watched her body arch again as she dived into her orgasm and he let himself go deep inside of her.

When it was over he pulled himself from her body and discarded the condom. Then he stood next to the bed looking down at her, at her body, naked but for the damn ankle socks. Her eyes were closed and her hands were resting on her breasts as if she was trying to keep her heart inside her rib cage.

This was the moment he should have told her to leave. Do it quick and cold and she could still hate him despite the fact that she’d been pleasured during the sex. Or maybe he could wait, he decided. Just for a little while. He was so damn weary. His muscles, now filled with a postcoital lethargy, seemed to give out to the point that he knew he needed to sit or he would fall. He stripped his jeans and boxers and moved back onto the bed with her.

Instantly, she opened her arms to him. He rested his head on her breasts and felt her legs circle the back of his thighs. One hand stroked his back, the other his head.

“It’s okay,” she whispered to him. “I’ve got you.”

It was so incredibly true, he almost wept.

After an hour he woke, hard and needy. The second time he took her from behind on his knees with her facing away from him. He thought if he couldn’t see her face it would be easier. But when he moved inside of her body, she gripped his hand and pinned it to her breast so that he could feel the rapid pounding of her heart. Not surprisingly, it beat in perfect unison with his.

The third time, he let her make love to him. It was a mistake because her sincerity and devotion during the act touched his soul and weakened his resolve. So much so that the fourth time he made love to her in return.

The next morning he left her in his disheveled bed. The need to escape had been so intense, it almost felt like fear. He couldn’t allow this to happen. Allow her to happen to him. She was a child. She had her whole life ahead of her. She…

Bullshit. She gets too close. She gets too deep. And you hate it because it messes with your control.

So he did the only thing that he thought made sense at the time, all the while telling himself that it was for her own good.

The next time he saw her was the following night. In honor of her promotion to field operative, the director of the Youth Adoption Program had decided to host a cocktail party for a number of politically influential people in an effort to promote the success of the program.

Quinlan recalled the exact instant Sabrina walked through the door of the director’s home, remembered the look in her face as if it was a piece of art he’d studied for years. She’d been so full of life and confidence. She’d looked like a princess ready to ascend the throne and take her rightful place as queen.

When she walked toward him, she beamed. And the brighter her smile got the more his body tensed. He reached out and found the arm of the person he’d brought to help him separate from her.

“Caroline, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

On cue, like the perfect political hostess she’d been raised to be, she turned and offered her hand to Sabrina. The contrast was startling to him.

Caroline was perfectly coiffed, perfectly poised, her cool blue dress was classic and conservative, and her blond hair was pulled back into a smooth tight bun. And her smile, although it was as sincere as she could make it, didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Sabrina on the other hand was all lean and wild energy. Her hair flew about her face, her strapless dress molded her body. It was a choice made by a woman confident in her sexuality and who didn’t care who knew it.

“Q?”

“Q,” Caroline laughed, the sound an elegant tinkle. “What a horrible nickname. Really, Jack, I do wish you would let people simply call you by your name.”

“Quinlan is my name.”

“And soon it will be mine,” she murmured into his ear. But loud enough for Sabrina to hear. That’s what he wanted. That’s what he’d been waiting for.

His eyes met Sabrina’s and he watched as she began to understand. But it wasn’t happening fast enough. Like any kill he’d ever made, the quicker the better.

“Caroline, this is Sabrina Masters. I’ve told you about her.”

“On a number of occasions,” Caroline confirmed. “So you’re the phenom. Quick, do something brilliant.”

He looked away from Sabrina’s gaze.

“Sorry, I didn’t bring my magic wand to do any tricks.”

Caroline laughed politely, but he could hear the acid in Sabrina’s tone.

“Well, there is one trick I have to thank you for. I think your…we’ll call it graduation…was what finally inspired Jack to make his move. Can you believe I’ve been dating this man for three years and finally today, completely out of the blue, he comes to my house and proposes.”

“Wow,” Sabrina replied, her eyes on him the whole time. This time he didn’t look away. He schooled his expression, knew it was impassive, and let her look all she wanted. It was for the best.

“No ring, mind you, but we’ll fix that shortly. I still can’t believe it.” Caroline turned to him then, her voice soft and sweet. “I knew waiting for you was the right decision.”

He lifted her hand and brought it to his lips. “I’m so glad you did.”

Sabrina’s eyes didn’t water up. She didn’t scream at him. She didn’t slap him dramatically, or blurt out to Caroline that her fiancé had been buried deep inside her for most of the previous night.

But she was paler and he knew he’d succeeded. This betrayal would penetrate. Right to her core. She might have been able to forgive him for breaking her bones. But she would never forgive him for this. He could feel it.

It was for the best.

“Congratulations. I wish you all the best, Caroline. You, too… Jack. I hope you get everything you deserve.”

Then she turned and walked away, and he decided, he hoped, he would never have to see her again.

Chapter 20

Present

The boat flew across the water as she piloted it over the soft swells. Kahsan kept one eye on her and managed to keep the boy under his physical control, too. Although, given the state of shock the kid was in, it wasn’t a difficult task.

“So you’re the great Sal Ploxm,” Sabrina said, trying to engage the kid enough that he would begin to understand she was not his enemy. Or at least less of a threat than Kahsan. “You know that’s a lousy anagram.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kahsan chimed in. “Smallpox is the worst of all viruses.”

“What’s your real name?”

The boy looked at her, saw what he believed was a killer and blanched to a shocking shade of white. Or he could have just been seasick.

“Your name, kid,” she tried again. “It’s not like it’s a hard question.”

Sabrina figured there had to be some sass in him. He’d been fearlessly and illegally hacking into seemingly impenetrable systems for more than a year and leaving his calling card at every turn. Underneath the pimples had to be someone with a healthy ego. She just needed to push him a little harder to find the right buttons.

Unfortunately, time was quickly running out as the island in front of them seemed to get larger. She’d spotted a small dock jutting off the shore and aimed for it by turning the wheel of the boat slightly to the right.

“Come on,” she pressed. “I’m not asking for your secrets or anything. Just your name.”

“Kev-Kevin,” he stuttered. “Kevin Pollard.”

“Sabrina Masters.”

“I read about you,” he said. “In some CIA files. They talked about what you could do. I didn’t really believe it.”

“No? That hurts, kid.”

“Frankly, I don’t believe it, either.” This from Kahsan, who held his gun, a SIG-Sauer, somewhat casually now. That was a good sign. He was beginning to believe that she wasn’t a threat.

“And why is that?”

“A female genius. Seems somewhat of an oxymoron to me.”

He chuckled and she smiled, but inwardly Sabrina listed one more reason why she hated this guy. Chauvinist pig.

They were almost upon the small island, so she pulled the throttle in reverse to stop their momentum. The boat glided in the water until it bumped up against the crude dock that was only about four feet in length. Sabrina found a rope that was already secured to the motorboat, hopped out quickly and secured it to one of the beams.

She turned around to assess the situation in the boat, looking for an opening to act, but saw that once again Kahsan had his gun pressed to the boy’s side. Kahsan was known for not taking any chances and he was living up to his reputation.

He motioned to Kevin to follow her on to the dock and then quickly stepped up behind him. Sabrina noted for the first time that he carried a small backpack over his right shoulder and couldn’t help but wonder what else he was carrying. She didn’t think it was camping supplies.

The cabin was down a path directly in front of them, snuggled in a thicket of trees. Arnold’s own little world. Sabrina couldn’t help but feel a tinge of sorrow. No doubt he would be irritated with the time she was wasting trying to take on a terrorist when there was work to be done. She only hoped that her instincts about Arnold would bear out.

And she was also sort of hoping that Quinlan was on his way.

It had been an excellent angle. It was a question of trusting the shot. Trusting in her abilities as she never had before. But if he had moved, if he had jerked at the last moment before the bullet hit, if he truly hadn’t trusted her and he had tried to duck…then he was dead.

Or dying.

Her heart and body clenched at the thought. If he was dead at her hand…

No, she wouldn’t think it. She couldn’t believe it and still function.

He was coming eventually, or he was unconscious, in which case she was on her own for the time being. Either way, he’d been spared from being shot by Kahsan. And she was prepared to finish the job. Another gun would have been a plus, but it wasn’t necessary. She had been trained by the best, after all.

Sabrina was the first to approach the cabin. The door swung open, clearly unattached to anything that would hold it in place.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Such disarray,” Kahsan noted. “They could have at least locked the door on their way out.”

“There is nothing inside that is valuable to anyone.” She looked at the boy pointedly. “Except to a chosen few, that is.”

Obviously no fire had been left burning, and the miniheaters had all been turned off-probably when they removed Arnold’s body-so there was no difference in the temperature once they stepped inside. The cabin consisted of only one room, though there was a curtain that separated what was basically an attached outhouse. Behind the curtain she could see an actual toilet bowl. That meant, at the very least, the cabin had running water.

But that’s about where the luxuries ended. Studying the space, Sabrina saw the narrow cot where Arnold had slept, the sink and small tub where he had washed, the hot plate and potbellied stove where he had cooked and the workstation where he had developed and protected genius.

The anachronism of the workstation in the primitive setting was startling. It was also a little humbling to know what he’d given up for his work. But she couldn’t think about that now. All of her focus had to be on the task at hand.

“There it is,” she pointed.

A monitor sat on the workstation. Swirls of computer-generated images flashed about the screen. Inside the seemingly innocuous machine was data that would pinpoint several leading terrorists’ locations.

Inside of it was her future. Her salvation. And if she was smart enough-frankly she thought she had an edge-Kahsan’s end.

Kahsan nodded and removed the pack he carried over his shoulder, dropping it at the boy’s feet.

“Let’s get to it, Mr. Ploxm. Make me believe I’ve picked the winning horse.”

He pushed the gun deeper into the boy’s ribs, and Sabrina could see the kid shake in reaction. But he did as instructed and bent over to pick up the pack. From it, he removed a rectangular piece of equipment. It looked like some kind of modified hard drive with a keyboard secured to the top of it. He extracted a few USB cables and began assembling the piece of equipment on the workstation next to Arnold’s computer.

Kevin connected his machine to a port on the back of the computer and on his keyboard hit a button. Instantly, the swirls on Arnold’s monitor were gone. In its place flashed a splash screen that prompted the user to key in a password.

“It’s a PC but this isn’t Windows OS,” he said, clearly surprised.

“Nope,” Sabrina confirmed. “Arnold didn’t believe in using anyone else’s operating system. He built this one himself.”

The kid seemed to absorb this information and continued to tap on the keys of his minicomputer. Only a few minutes passed in silence, but to the group it seemed infinitely longer.

“What’s taking so long?” Kahsan snapped. He stepped up behind the boy and placed the gun to his temple. “Do you need some added incentive?”

“You’re only scaring him,” Sabrina commented.

Leaning against the wall across from the workstation, she crossed her arms over her chest in an effort to appear casual even as she studied the room for potential weapons. So far the most dangerous item she’d spotted was the hot plate and the wood that was piled up by the stove. Neither would do much good against the SIG-Sauer.

Kahsan sneered at her. “We all have our methods of motivation.”

“Right. I gather it must take a tremendous amount of motivation to get someone to strap on a bomb and blow themselves up. And you seem to get people to do that all the time.”

“What can I say? I have a gift for inspiration.” He turned back to the boy. “Well?”

“You don’t get it, this isn’t like a normal hack. It’s his own operating system. I can’t use any of the backdoors I know.”

Kahsan took a deep almost yoga style breath and then released it. “You do understand time is of the essence.”

“I-I’m trying…but…”

“Try harder or die.”

Sabrina watched the kid wipe the sweat from his brow and ground her teeth together with frustration. He may have been a snot-nosed hacker, but he sure as hell didn’t deserve to die for it. If she let him attempt the password and he failed, the computer would blow. Not with any real force but enough to destroy the machine and possibly take off his hands depending on how much explosive material Arnold had used to booby-trap the thing. Certainly it would be enough to knock over Kahsan, which would give her the chance she needed to take him out.

She didn’t want to lose the precious data inside the computer, but if it was a question of taking Kahsan out or saving the data, Krueger had made it clear what her priority was. The safe bet would be to let the kid fail and trigger the explosion, giving her a window of opportunity. But looking at him standing there with his knees shaking, she knew she couldn’t do it.

It was possible Quinlan was right about her. That she was too much of a softy for this kind of work because, so help her, if something happened to Kevin, she didn’t know how she’d ever recover from the guilt.

Quinlan.

Where the hell was he? If only he would come, now, before she had to make a choice… No, she thought. She couldn’t count on him. This was her show.

She moved closer to the kid and watched as his fingers played over the keyboard of his machine. In a way she imagined this was what it must have been like to watch Mozart play the piano. And it reminded her of…well, her.

“I can try a shadow hit,” he muttered. “It will spin through all the possible combinations until it hits and-”

“No good,” Sabrina informed him. “Arnold’s got the machine booby-trapped.” It wasn’t information she’d planned on sharing, but she had to stop the kid before he started his program.

Kahsan looked at her suspiciously.

She merely shrugged. “What? You tossed me aside for some sixteen-year-old kid and I’m supposed to just tell you everything?”

He pointed the gun at her face. “You’re supposed to tell me everything or I’ll kill you.”

“You’ve got a one-track mind, you know that? Fine. He only gets two chances to get it right. If the second attempt fails…boom.”

“Boom?” Kahsan questioned.

“Boom,” Kevin mumbled.

Sabrina was really starting to fear the kid might just pass out. The fact that he’d managed not to wet his pants up until this point was rather impressive.

“Boom,” she reiterated. “Not enough to take out the cabin. Just the computer, and maybe some…appendages of anyone close to it. Arnold was paranoid. The only reason he allowed for two chances was so he wouldn’t blow his work up over a stupid typo.”

“I can try the combinations without actually entering them,” Kevin suggested eagerly. “My program will spin through all possibilities to find a match against what was last keyed in as a password. It’s just that I won’t know for certain if it fails until we actually try it. It’s more of a risk but it’s still an option.”

The kid was no dummy when it came to computers, that was a given, but he also knew a little something about life, too, she thought. Right now he believed his only chance of survival was proving to be more useful than she was. He was right.

Kahsan looked at her for corroboration and she shrugged. “It sounds feasible. Something I might try.”

He turned back to the boy, once more focusing the gun on him. “Do it.”

Again, he started to bang away at his keyboard. The machine gave off a mechanical hum and the room got quiet as more time passed.

His eyes lit up. He turned to Kahsan and actually smiled. “I got it. I have one we can try.”

“By all means.”

With trembling fingers the kid moved over to the monitor and, using the keyboard in front of it, typed in a nine-digit code of letters, numbers and signs that he believed was Arnold’s password. He hit the enter key with a tap of authority.

Sabrina wasn’t surprised when the password failed. “Access denied,” she read. “I hate that phrase.”

“Damn. I really thought that was it.”

Kahsan’s eyes grew dark and Sabrina could see the veneer of sophistication and polish he carried around like a cloak start to slip. In its place was the essence of evil that she knew was the bulk of his makeup. “Obviously not,” he said, his voice tight with anger. “Try again.”

This time Kevin seemed a lot less certain when he moved back to his computer. “He could be rotating the passwords. It’s what I do. So I would have to find the second to last thing keyed and assume it’s replaced the old password already.”

Both Kevin and Kahsan turned to her for confirmation. She bobbed her head. “Rotating passwords. Yeah, Arnold might try something like that.”

Kevin went back to work.

“Okay, I have it,” he announced. He walked back over to the monitor, but hesitated before he started to key anything in. “Uh…you might want to stand back.”

Kahsan didn’t have to be told. He was already as far away as the room would allow. Sabrina didn’t bother to move. Instead she moved up so she could look over the boy’s shoulder.

Shaky fingers carefully tapped out a ten-digit code. Each tap echoed in the room like a drumbeat. When he was done he pressed down on the enter key. Sabrina could see his eyes were closed.

The screen went blank for a second then it came back with a message. “Access Denied.”

Immediately, the kid jumped back expecting the machine to blow at any second. When nothing happened Kahsan turned to her for an explanation.

“Oh that’s right,” she said innocently. “I forgot. The older Arnold got the more his fingers would tremble. To give himself a break he allowed three chances to get the password right.”

“You lying bitch.” She watched Kahsan fight his inner demons, the ones telling him to kill her now. She hoped his common sense won out.

“Yes, but the good news is we get one more shot. Now, are we done letting the boy play his games? Because I really think it’s time for the girl to take over.”

Chapter 21

His head hurt.

It was the first thought that penetrated through the searing pain. He moved his hand and reached for his temple and felt the wetness. When he opened his eyes even the dim light from the winter sun blinded him. So he closed them, marshaled his resources and tried again. This time when he opened his eyes he was able to focus on his fingers. They were sticky and red.

What had happened?

That his mind could form the question over the pounding beat that thudded against his temple was miraculous. Had something hit him?

No, someone had shot him.

Sabrina.

The events trickled through his brain like a movie preview. He’d found out through sources that she’d contacted Kahsan, heard from her that it was her plan to use herself as bait, decided that he could trust her and then…she shot him.

But he wasn’t dead. Instead the bullet had just grazed his scalp. Why had she done that? He knew enough about her skill with a gun to know that if she’d truly meant to kill him, he’d be dead.

You really thought I wanted to be some kind of hero?

No, he didn’t think she wanted to be a hero. For the most part she wasn’t hero material. But he did believe she was ready to get back in the game, ready to assume the responsibilities that came with her awesome gifts.

They hadn’t expected the kid. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen and was very obviously operating under duress. Had she changed the plan in an effort to save the boy? Maybe she was more of a hero than he knew.

It would also explain why he was still alive.

Quinlan shifted his head slightly and let his eyes refocus. Not two feet in front of him was Sabrina’s Colt Defender. There was no chatter in the area. No sound of a motorboat on the water, which told him they were probably already on the island.

There had been the driver who had been sent into the woods to serve as lookout. Where was he? Hopefully, not looking in Quinlan’s direction.

As cautiously as he could, he moved his hand away from his head and reached for the gun but came up short. Gaining purchase in the ground with his shoes, he pushed himself the necessary few inches forward and this time successfully gripped the weapon in his hand. There was still no sound from the woods and no indication that the driver had seen his movements.

Now armed, the only thing left to do was act. With a burst of speed he rolled onto his back, aiming the Defender at nothing, waiting for his opponent to act first. His eyes scanned the clearing and as far as he could see into the woods, but there were no sudden movements. More importantly no gunshots.

Confident now, and with a lingering suspicion, Quinlan sat up. His head protested by blurring his vision and he feared for a moment he would black out. But like the soldier he’d been trained to be, he fought through the pain and nausea and got to his feet. His first steps were more like staggers, but eventually he was able to find his balance. To clear his vision even more he lifted his right arm up using the sleeve of his jacket to stem the blood that was still dripping from his wound.

That’s when he spotted him. The driver was sitting in the grass. His back against a tree, he might have been taking a catnap. But the angle of his head on his shoulders told Quinlan otherwise. Nevertheless he approached cautiously, his weapon trained on him at all times. Within a few feet he saw the gaping hole in the back of the man’s head and the seeping blood that flowed down over his back in a morbid stream.

Quinlan looked back to where he’d lain on the ground, the puddle of blood visible in the dirt and studied the angle.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

Annie Oakley had struck again.

Kahsan still had his gun on the boy, even as he glared at her. “Why should I trust anything you say? You’ve lied. Twice.”

“I withheld information. It’s really not uncommon in these situations,” Sabrina insisted. “Hey, you gave the kid a try. He came up short. Now, I think we want to talk about my money. “

Kahsan’s arm pivoted and suddenly the gun was pointed at her.

“You’re kidding me?” she laughed. Then the laughter stopped when the gun remained pointed at her face. Coldly, Sabrina reminded him, “You have one chance, and only one chance to get into this computer. Wonder Boy here has proven he can’t get the job done. I don’t think you’re going to kill me. I think you’re going to pay me.”

Quinlan left the driver and headed for the only option left to him to cross the river. He’d considered and dismissed swimming. Though it might be faster, the temperature of the water was low enough to induce hypothermia. He could be halfway across before he felt the effects, but then it would be too late. The small rowboat had two oars tucked inside under the tarp he’d used to hide himself earlier. He untied it from the dock, jumped inside and fought against the raging pain in his head as he dropped the bottom half of the oars into the water and began stroking.

The boat seemed to move by inches over the water and Quinlan cursed even as he pushed himself harder to cover the distance. He had only one immediate problem right now. And that was time.

Kahsan’s and Sabrina’s eyes locked. She had to clamp down a shiver of disgust against his dark soulless gaze. The holdout for money was nothing more than a stalling tactic. She was running out of options and hoped that maybe a few more minutes was all Quinlan would need to reach them. If not, she saw only one chance but it would mean sacrificing Arnold’s work and quite possibly her hands, maybe even her life.

“Fine. You’ll get your money. Now get to it.”

“You know, nobody ever told me you had such a sense of humor. You don’t honestly think I believe you’ll pay up after I give you what you want. I want you to get on the phone now and wire the money. Lucky for you I’ve memorized my bank account information.”

She watched his face turn red under his sun-kissed skin, but he pulled a cell phone out of his pants’ pocket. “Five million, correct?”

“That was before you insulted me with Wonder Boy here. Make it seven.”

He tilted his head back and a noise that she imagined was supposed to be a laugh fell out. “You think you can negotiate? With me?”

“I think I’m holding all the cards,” she said confidently.

Minutes were ticking by.

Q, where the hell are you?

The boat bumped against the shore of the island. Quinlan hadn’t bothered with trying to get to the dock, figuring the path of least distance would be quicker. He jumped out and made for the cabin that he knew to be tucked inside the thicket of trees.

Sadly, the obvious answer to Sabrina’s question was that Quinlan was still facedown on the ground on the other shore. She thought again about the angle of the shot. Her instincts told her it couldn’t have been more than a graze, but there was no way to be sure.

The final hand of cards had been dealt.

“Not quite,” Kahsan stated in opposition to her previous statement. “You are, after all, just a woman. And I, for one, know how squeamish and emotional women can get.”

He moved like a snake reaching out to pull Kevin toward him. Then he pushed his gun down the front of the boy’s pants. Kevin’s eyes went wide, first with confusion, then with horror.

“Are you a virgin, boy? I would hate to think I would shoot your pecker off without it ever knowing a woman. But if she insists…”

Kevin was shaking so much he couldn’t answer.

“It won’t kill him, but it will be awfully painful. Especially if I start with the balls. Naturally, we’ll move on from there to his kneecaps.”

“Please…don’t.” Kevin started sobbing uncontrollably.

Sabrina struggled to remain impassive against his tears and against Kahsan’s threat, which she had no doubt he would act upon. A good poker player had to know her opponents in order to win. She had to know when to bluff, but more importantly she had to know when the other players were bluffing, too. Kahsan didn’t seem to be the type.

Her problem was that she was supposed to be a heartless mercenary. A traitor to her country. The thought of a boy being tortured in front of her should have had no impact. Then she heard the cock of the gun.

“Stop. Okay, you win. Not because I give a damn about this kid, but I truly don’t want to see his little willie go flying across the room. I’ll get you past Arnold’s password and then we’ll talk about his encryption code.”

She moved up a step to stand in front of the monitor. Kahsan stood about two feet away with the gun still down the kid’s pants. She stared at the boy’s crotch, then glanced back up at Kahsan. “You getting turned on?”

Immediately, and predictably, he pulled the gun free. “Just get it done.”

She glanced over at Kevin’s self-constructed computer and lingered. “Hey, kid, what’s this button here?”

Without thinking, the boy stepped closer to her and, in doing so, brought Kahsan, who was holding on to his arm, closer, too.

She had to hope that the explosion would be enough to knock them all down. Best-case scenario, Kahsan would lose his grip on the boy and the gun. And Sabrina also had to hope that, regardless of the physical damage done to her, she could move quick enough to either reach the gun or take Kahsan out in some other way.

She’d fought through physical pain before. She knew she wouldn’t freeze up, but there was no way to know if whatever was left to her would be enough to defeat him. There were way too many variables for her liking, and the odds weren’t in her favor. But they had run out of time.

It was now or never. With a silent goodbye to Arnold’s work and her hands, Sabrina reached for the keyboard, her fingers finding the first few keys.

“Kahsan!”

The shout came from the doorway. Sabrina looked up and saw Kahsan’s gun hand aim toward the voice. Picking up the first thing she could get her hands on, she swung Kevin’s computer like a bat and was able to make contact with his hand. The gun went off, but the shot was wide.

Then Sabrina watched as a bloody Quinlan fired back. Three steady emotionless shots to Kahsan’s chest sent the man flying against the back wall, as his body was ripped apart by the power of the Defender’s bullets.

There wasn’t even a question of hitting the kid. Q’s aim was too good.

Chapter 22

“Nice shot,” Sabrina said, then quickly held her hands up when she saw her own gun pointed at her. “Hey, I’m one of the good guys. You get that, right? Q, tell me you get that.”

“Relax,” he said as he lowered his hand. “It didn’t take me too long to figure out your Annie Oakley impersonation. You cut it pretty damn close.”

“I had to make it look real.”

“It felt real,” he admitted.

“Yeah. You’re still bleeding.” She went in search of something that would curtail the flow of blood from his temple and came up with a roll of paper towels. She tossed the roll to him, then joined him as they stood together over Kahsan’s lifeless body.

His eyes were still open, the shock of defeat still there somehow, even though his life was most assuredly over.

“He doesn’t look so scary now,” she murmured. She turned and saw Kevin on his knees picking up the pieces of his broken machine.

“You all right, kid?”

“I think you broke it,” he whined.

Sabrina decided not to point out that in doing so she might have saved his life, certainly his sex life. She was about to tell him so, when a sound in the distance caught her attention. A faint noise roared over the water, getting louder as each second passed.

“I think the cavalry is here,” she informed them.

Quinlan picked up the gun that had fallen from Kahsan’s hand and turned to face the door. “Listen,” he told her. “They’re probably going to take you into custody until they get this mess straightened out. But I’ll make sure Krueger understands what you did here today.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

He squinted at her, but she wasn’t sure if that was because there was blood running down his eye, or because he was truly confused. A few seconds later, three agents came through the door in perfect formation. Two low, one high.

“The place is secure,” Quinlan told them. He set both guns down on the workstation and held his hands up. Because he did, Sabrina did, too.

“We’re cool. The bad guy is dead.”

Immediately, the agents rushed to Kahsan’s body. One checked for vitals, the other had already removed a kit from his waist pack and was taking fingerprints. The fingerprints would provide concrete identification along with the DNA they would no doubt extract.

A moment later, a large figure was framed in the doorway. Sabrina would have recognized him by the bulldog expression, if she hadn’t been expecting him.

“Assistant Director Krueger,” she announced. “Good to see you again.”

“Ms. Masters,” Kruger replied, his face lifting a little with what she imagined was anticipation. “Tell me it’s him.”

“It’s him.”

Krueger walked by them, ignoring Quinlan’s rather pointed glare and stared down at the body. “Can I say now that I really never thought this would work?”

“So little faith,” Sabrina admonished.

Quinlan focused on her. “They contacted you first. This was a setup. And I was the patsy,” he finished, his voice tight.

She shrugged. There was no point in stating what he’d already figured out. And at the end of the day, the idea that she had one up on him was sort of appealing. “They used you because they knew you wouldn’t stop until he was dead. And now he is. You did good, Q. Don’t lose sight of that.”

Quinlan emitted a low bark. “They didn’t send me because of Kahsan. They sent me because…”

He didn’t finish his statement and it made her curious. But then the agents were removing Kahsan’s body and Krueger was standing in front of them demanding their attention. His head nodded toward Kevin who was still fussing over his minicomputer.

“Who is this?”

“Kevin, come here and meet Assistant Director Krueger. AD Krueger, meet Kevin Pollard, aka the mighty and legendary Sal Ploxm.”

“Yeah, not anymore,” Kevin mumbled. “You broke my computer. You know how hard it’s going to be to get parts for this?”

Fascinating, Sabrina thought. Gone was the terrified kid with the gun down his pants. In his place was all the ego and the arrogance of Sal Ploxm she’d been expecting. In a way, it was a relief. She didn’t see an ego like his suffering from any long-term effects of Kahsan’s terror.

But she wasn’t going to coddle the boy. “Kid, do you understand how much trouble you’re in?”

His eyes widened at that. “What did I do? He kidnapped me from my house. He made me bring my stuff. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Not for this. For the hacking,” she reminded him. “For the viruses. I know a bartender who lost some love e-mails who would like to nail your skinny little hide to a wall. Trust me, if he’d been here instead of me, your ‘pecker’ would already be gone and he’d have moved on to kneecap number two.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. If I was you, I would stop complaining and start sucking up big-time. If I decide I like you, I might put in a good word for you with some people I know. You see, there is this program…I think it might be right for you. You came pretty close with the rotating passwords. Speaking of which…”

Sabrina walked over to the keyboard and carefully hit the backspace key over the keys she’d typed in an attempt to purposefully blow the machine.

Krueger and Quinlan came up behind her. “How many attempts did the kid make?”

“Two.”

“Only one more,” Quinlan stated. “His hands. I remember he told me that he’d been forced to go to the standard three attempt approach to protect against his shaky fingers.”

“It’s okay. I only need one,” she told them.

She felt Kevin peek around the two taller men. “If you want to wait,” he offered. “I think I can get this working again. You can use it to…”

She sent him a baleful glance that shut him up. “Thanks, but I got it covered.”

“Quick, what’s the significance of the number three?”

“It’s between two and four.”

“Excellent. Always start with the obvious. You’ll do, Girl Genius. You’ll do fine.”

The conversation played back in her head and caused a feeling of warm nostalgia. Arnold was a good man for all of his idiosyncrasies. He truly was.

“He contacted me,” she explained. “I didn’t lie about that, Q.”

“Just about everything else,” he replied.

“Uh…well…yes. But not about that. He found me. He wanted me to come home. He would have left the back door open.”

Sabrina typed the keys slowly and watched as the asterisks appeared on the screen to make up one long word.

G.I.R.L.G.E.N.I.U.S.

“Always start with the obvious. That’s what he would have told me to do. But just in case…you guys might want to back up.”

The three didn’t need any further encouragement. They all took several steps away from the workstation and held their collective breaths as she hit the enter key.

The screen went black and then the speakers blazed out a trumpet sound. A computer-modulated voice spoke as the words “Access Granted” flashed on the screen.

Hello, Sabrina. Welcome home. I made this first part easy for you, but the next stage is up to you. Your brain against mine. I only wish I was there to know what the outcome will be. I would say good luck. But truly, I hope you fail.

“Old crank,” Krueger cursed. “He doesn’t even care what this is possibly costing the United States.”

Sabrina shook her head. “No, he doesn’t. He just wants to play. Einstein better watch out.”

“What?” Krueger prodded.

“Never mind. But hey, don’t rule me out. I got the bad guy, didn’t I?”

“I got the bad guy,” Quinlan corrected her.

“Semantics,” she dismissed. “I’m going to need a chair.”

Kevin was the one to push up a desk chair that had been left in the corner of the room. He wheeled it over the uneven floor of the cabin and offered it to her as courteously as a sixteen-year-old kid knew how to do. Then he stood at her shoulder as she opened the folders of data she would need in an attempt to decipher his encryption code.

A screen full of symbols that would have looked like garbage to anyone else appeared on the monitor.

“Whoa,” he muttered. “Check it out. That’s not PGP encryption.”

“I told you, he didn’t like to use other people’s software,” Sabrina explained. She watched the signs, letters and numbers scroll across the screen. Stream after stream of running data hid behind a pattern that Arnold was pretty confident no computer and certainly no human would ever be able to read.

“Your brain against mine, Arnold,” she whispered to the monitor. “I think I’m going to be here for a while.”

“How long?” Krueger wanted to know.

Sabrina shook her head. “No idea. You should take Q to the hospital. He’s bleeding through the towels and I don’t need the distraction of him fainting on me.”

“I’m fine. I’ll stay.”

Her chair swiveled and it brought a smile to her lips. Arnold loved to swivel. “Seriously, this could take days. Even weeks. If I ever break it. You should go and take care of yourself. That’s a nasty-looking wound I gave you.”

“The other agents will stay with her,” Krueger added. “She’s right. You need to have it stitched. And we have to get the boy back to his parents.”

“They’re going to be so completely peeved when they find out,” Kevin lamented. “My dad’s office was, like, the first network I hit.”

Krueger took the kid by one arm and pushed him toward the door even as the kid cradled his precious machine in his other hand. “So, Kevin. Have you ever considered using your talents for the greater good…?”

Sabrina smiled as she watched them leave and then stood so she could focus her attention on Quinlan. He was planted in the center of the cabin.

It was an odd moment. For the first time since they had been reunited, there was no pretense between them. No hidden agendas or suspicions. She wasn’t sure what to say. Apparently, he didn’t know what to say, either, because he only stared at her. His expression was blank.

A sad thought occurred to her. What if it was too late? What if he hated her now? Forgiveness wasn’t a word either of them liked to use. Somehow she’d managed it. She was really hoping he would, too.

“You should go,” she said finally, when the not speaking got to her. “I have work.”

He glanced at the monitor over her shoulder, then looked back at her. All he said was, “Do good.”

“I’ll try.”

With that, he turned and left the cabin, careful to shut the door on his way out.

“See you, Q.” She said it only because she didn’t know if it was the last time she ever would.

With a deep sigh she shook off her melancholy and sat back down in Arnold’s chair, her eyes pinned to the screen. After a while, she didn’t know how much time had passed, one of the agents came back inside the cabin carrying wood for the stove.

She’d almost forgotten that it was still winter and freezing inside the primitive abode. She’d forgotten because she was still wearing Quinlan’s coat. And it was warm.

“We’ve been instructed to give you anything you need,” the agent told her.

“Right now the only thing I need is a pack of cigarettes and some space.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh,” she said as another thought occurred to her. “There are two others, right?”

“There are three of us on the island,” the agent who had brought the wood answered. “Our mission is to protect you at all costs while you work.”

“Got it. But here is the thing. I’m going to need to take a break every once in a while. You guys don’t happen to play poker, do you?”

Chapter 23

Ten years ago

“You understand we need this code broken as soon as-”

“Possible,” Sabrina finished. “I get it.”

She was back in the Comm center. Her home away from home for the past six months. The players changed, but their roles were always the same. An urgent and edgy CIA manager. Two tech geeks who liked to fuss with the sophisticated computer. Logically, she knew they couldn’t be the same two every time, but it was impossible to tell. They all wore bad clothes, had bad hair and mumbled incoherently in Java. Sabrina wondered if there was a special school that trained them how to dress and act like complete losers.

And tonight there was a group of very serious-looking men, in very serious suits, with very serious expressions on their faces. She was told they were from a congressional intelligence subcommittee, here to study her and evaluate her progress.

She didn’t care.

The only thing missing was Quinlan. He was back in the field last she’d heard. Bitterly, she wondered if Caroline was missing her precious Jack. Maybe crying perfect tears into her pillow every night.

His replacement was her direct superior at the agency. A buffoon who was currently trying to show off in front of the politicos and another man, who she knew was the CIA director himself. Big crowd tonight.

Sabrina glanced at the wall already filled with numbers and thought about her role in this drama. She was just a tool, like any other satellite or computer or weapon they had in their arsenal.

“Do you see anything, Sabrina?”

This from her nervous boss. He was nothing like Q. She’d figured that out the second she met him. He was all spit and polish. An Ivy League ladder climber. She wondered if he’d spent any time at all out in the field, or if his rise in the agency had come purely from kissing ass.

Idiot. “Not yet,” she answered.

Stubbornly, she refused to focus in on the numbers in front of her. She thought about what Quinlan would say if he was here. He would tell her to forget about the boss she didn’t respect. Forget the higher-ups who had come to watch her perform like a trained monkey, and concentrate only on getting the job done.

Well, screw him.

Since her graduation she’d grown bored with the endless puzzles she’d been asked to solve. The point of doing any of this was lost on her. She cracked one code; there was another to take its place. There always would be.

Arnold had tried to convince her to come work with him, but her boss wouldn’t have it. He claimed that she was needed in other areas, which was bullshit. She just made him look good. She was his secret weapon, a code breaker who could perform even faster than some of the most sophisticated software programs the government had ever written.

She was sick of it. Sick of the manipulation, the politics involved at the agency, and sick to death of the expectations that were being heaped on her shoulders.

“Do you need another page?”

One of the geeks was getting antsy. Her reputation preceded her. After forty some minutes and no answer, it was clear they were worried that something was wrong.

Something was wrong.

“Hey,” she snarled. “If you think you can do this faster, by all means.”

No one bothered to reply.

Why had she come to this place? Why had she agreed to become their weapon? Answers that had come so easily a year ago, now stumped her. This was supposed to be her grand purpose, stuck in some dark room performing tricks for congressmen-the kind that didn’t involve sex?

Her father wanted her to use her brainpower for good. Well, where the hell was he? What had he ever done for her that what he wanted should even matter to her? He certainly didn’t love her as a father should.

Then there was Quinlan. He expected her to use her gifts to benefit the United States of America. How honorable. How noble. Ironic, considering he’d screwed her when he was almost engaged to someone else. In her mind that was as dishonorable a thing as a man could do.

No, nobody gave a damn about her. Nobody ever had. It was time for her to start taking her cue from them. It was time for her to stop giving a damn about anyone else. About anything else.

She needed to help herself. She had to be her first priority. Otherwise the world as she understood it would walk all over her. She was tired of being stepped on, exhausted to her bones of being used for the benefit of everyone else…but her.

“I can’t see anything,” she told them, even as the pattern formed in front of her eyes. What did it matter if she told them what it was? What would it get her, but another chance to do this all over again? And again.

“Are you sure?” her boss whined. “I don’t understand. She’s never had trouble before,” he told his superior. “Maybe you can give it another try.”

“Maybe you can shove these pictures up your ass,” she volleyed. She turned then and left the Comm center for the last time.

The next day she was called before a panel to talk about her behavior. When she failed to give them the answers they wanted to hear, she was fired.

Willful insubordination. And they weren’t wrong.

She left the CIA. Left her life as she knew it and promised herself that she would never look back.

Present

It wasn’t her record best time. It took her three weeks, two days, seven hours, fifty-six minutes and five seconds. But finally she saw it-a pattern in the seemingly endless waves of random symbols. It was like a thread that had been left loose after the final stitch was sewn.

Once she found it all she needed to do was pull. And pull. And pull. When she had a solid grasp on it, she was able to give it one final tug. The data came spilling forth from the computer like a one-armed bandit in Vegas gave forth quarters once the magic figures were aligned in the window.

Part of her, the sentimental part, couldn’t help but be sorry for Arnold. She hoped that he was in a far nicer place than the cabin she had called home for several weeks. But she envisioned him looking down on her right now and cursing like a drunken sailor that he’d been beaten. Defeated soundly in three weeks, two days, seven hours, fifty-six minutes and five seconds when it had taken him more than a decade to write the code.

Her brain against his.

It had been quite a challenge. A challenge that had left her with a severe headache, an empty belly and cramps in her fingers and arms for several days running as she began to test the limits of what she could do both mentally and physically. But she’d won. And the world would be a safer place for it. Or at least America would be. For now.

She felt really good about that.

Her first and only call was to Krueger. She rattled off the coordinates of every tagged terrorist in the system, pinpointing their current location. From there it wasn’t hard to find those who were residing in the western hemisphere. The few that had been allowed to infiltrate homeland security in order to identify their compatriots, four in total, were the first to be picked up.

It turned out they were in Florida. Orlando of all places, which led Sabrina to secretly suspect that some cartoon character might be a turncoat and a terrorist. Or it could have had something to do with the climate and the bulk of foreign tourists in that part of the country year round. That seemed more sensible.

She left Arnold’s cabin with a weary but satisfied smile. The agents had driven her the three and a half hours north back to her sleepy small town in central Pennsylvania. Her house, battered and bruised from all the recent activity, waited for her. Inexplicably, when she saw it, she felt tears spring to her eyes. Such a girly thing to do.

She smiled at the group in the car with her. These were the same three men with whom she’d shared her company for the past few weeks. The same men she’d taken for all of their spare cash in several well-played hands of seven-card stud. Deuces wild.

“Thanks, guys,” she said as she got out of the car.

“You did a hell of a thing,” the agent driving told her. The respect was there in his voice.

She smiled and thought about how good that made her feel, too. First doing the job, then being applauded for it. She thought about how long it had been since she had felt just this good and knew it had been ten years ago.

That’s when it occurred to her. This wasn’t supposed to be about her. Instead it was about doing the right thing, stopping the bad guys and saving lives. As a grown-up she could see that now.

“All in a day’s work.” She shrugged.

Sabrina left the agents and jogged up the path to her home. It had only been weeks, but it could have been years she missed it so much. This was her place, the one place she knew she absolutely belonged. She was practically giddy with the anticipation of being back among her things.

Until, as soon as her foot hit the porch, one of the slate roof tiles slipped loose from its perch and came crashing down in front of her, nearly braining her in the process.

The bitch.

“You missed me, didn’t you?” she asked the intractable house.

In reply, another slate fell to the porch.

The next day, balanced on the roof, Sabrina thought again about what she’d done by giving up the bounty money on Kahsan’s head. She could have hired workers, she could have hired decorators. She could have leveled this house to the ground and had a new one built.

Instead, she was crouched on the roof, in the freezing cold, trying to get a stupid slate rectangle to stay put.

“Fool,” she muttered to herself.

The sound of a car approaching had her shifting her attention to the empty street. A sleek black Mercedes turned the corner and rolled up in front of her sidewalk. Her breath caught a little as she contemplated who might be coming to visit.

When Quinlan stepped out of the car, his frame and his gait both easily recognizable, her heart did a little tumble in her chest and her knees grew suspiciously weak. Not a good thing, considering where she was.

Carefully, she crawled down the ladder and waited for him. Making it appear as if she was taking his presence in stride, she plopped herself down on the porch step. He opened the back door of the car and pulled out a tool belt heavy with oddly shaped metal objects that she immediately determined would be very useful in repairing things on and in old houses. He flipped the belt over his shoulder and walked down the path toward where she sat.

His salt-and-pepper gray hair seemed to mesh with the melting snow on the ground, the residual aftermath of a small storm that had passed through the area a few days ago. He wore sturdy beige construction boots, jeans that had seen some labor and a cream wool sweater not all that dissimilar to the one she currently wore.

Up close she could see that he had another scar in addition to the one over his eyebrow. This one was on his temple. It was from her gun.

From her. And from Kahsan, she thought. They had all been involved.

“Hey,” she started, because she doubted he would.

“Hello.”

“Feeling better?” she wondered aloud and pointed to her own temple to indicate the source of her concern.

“Fine.”

“Good.”

Awkwardness and silence reigned for a few moments.

“You got your job back,” he stated.

She tilted her head back and forth. “Sort of. Krueger and I both agreed that contract work would be a better fit.”

He nodded, his eyes looking up at the roof. “Word down on the Farm is you didn’t take the reward available for Kahsan’s kill,” he said. “It was rightfully yours. I know I don’t have to tell you that.”

“No, you don’t. But I guess it seemed wrong to take that money when I was really just doing my job. Of course now my roof is caving in and I’m regretting the hell out of that decision.”

He smiled. “So I see. I was thinking…I have some time off. Maybe I could give you a hand…with the house.”

Interesting. Jack Quinlan wanted to work on her roof. There were all sorts of implications in that statement. And all of them made her feel gushy inside.

“You want to work on my roof?”

“I would like to help you fix up this place,” he said slowly, almost carefully. Then he added, “You never really cared much about making a place of your own. I could see from the beginning that this house was different. I think it’s good for you. To have a real home.”

It was different. This house was important. And he was right calling it her home. The fact that he understood that, knew how to distinguish it from every other residence she’d lived in because of their history together only added to the gushy going on in her belly. Now, she was positively mushy. She hated it when she got mushy.

But she didn’t have to let him know that. Instead, she smiled casually, as if it didn’t matter in the least what he did.

“Okay. Whatever you want. I make hot chocolate in the afternoons.”

“I like hot chocolate,” he said.

“And in this house, when I have guests, we play poker every night.”

He smirked. “I brought some extra cash.”

“Excellent.”

They both got quiet again for a moment. Then he started to move away from her toward the ladder that was resting up against the house. The ladder would lead him to the second-floor roof with the broken and difficult to manipulate slate tiles.

“You know, Q, slate is a tricky thing to work with.” She figured it was only fair to warn him.

“Really.”

“Yep. It can be temperamental and stubborn. It very rarely goes where you want it to go.”

“I see.”

“But…if you handle it just right, with enough care and patience the end result can be a beautiful thing.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Satisfied, she nodded.

“And Q…”

He stopped short of the ladder, faced her, his gaze inscrutable. Or not. To her he actually looked a little nervous.

“Don’t mess up this time.”

His lips turned up slightly. “I don’t plan to.”

STEPHANIE DOYLE

a dedicated romance reader, began writing her own romantic stories, some funny, some adventurous, but all delivering the quintessential happy ending, at age fifteen. At eighteen she submitted her first story to Harlequin Books and by twenty-six she was published. Now in her thirties, she struggles between the demands of her “day” job, her writing and trying to find a little romance of her own. She lives in South Jersey with her two cats, Alexandria Hamilton and Theodora Roosevelt. She wants to get a dog, but the cats have outvoted her.

***

Content

Stephanie Doyle
Calculated Risk

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

STEPHANIE DOYLE