Athena Force

—19 The Good Thief (09-2007)

Judith Leon

When the case is as potentially explosive as that of an Athena student’s abduction, Lindsey Novak never enters a negotiation without knowing just who to trust. She thrives on black-market deals with shady characters—even when she has to steal from the thieves themselves. But this time every weapon in her arsenal— including the enigmatic and all-too-sexy bodyguard hired by her father—may not be enough. For recovering the missing girl is only the first phase in thwarting a plan so evil it could change humanity forever.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-0586-8 THE GOOD THIEF

Copyright Š 2007 by Harlequin Books S.A.

To Hal, the Marko of my life.

Acknowledgments

There are many friends and colleagues to whom I owe profound thanks. I created this story with my friend and writing partner, Peggy Lang. She is a brilliant story editor, and we have begun to write novels together. She helped me to envision and compose The Good Thief. I am also profoundly indebted to my long-standing writers groups for their always-honest reviews: A. B. Curtis, Donna Erickson, Pete Johnson and Judith Levine, the Friday team; and Chet Cunningham, Al Kramer, Bev Miller, Tom Utts and others of the Monday faithful. And for their story input and editing, I have two delightful editors to thank at Silhouette Books: Tara Parsons and Stacy Boyd.

Prologue

L indsey Novak fought a rising sense of panic, fought an image of standing before her father having failed. She couldn’t let that happen.

A waning moon, still nearly full, shone above the WhiteTankMountains northwest of Phoenix on the last Thursday night in March. The mild night air made conditions perfect for the final event of the AthenaAcademy’s unique senior triathlon. Seventeen-year-old Lindsey checked the glowing display on her watch: 3:32 a.m.

She stifled an urge to shout at Gloria Muńoz, the current leader, that they needed to move fastershouting would do no good whatsoever.

With her five teammates, Lindsey had been hiking and jogging for exactly four hours and thirty-two minutes, working their way southwest from their original helicopter drop-off at an elevation of 2,800 feet in the northernmost ridge of the regional preserve.

She heard the whump-whump of the helicopter first. “Down!” she said in a hushed voice to the others. “The chopper!”

Their single-file lane instantly broke, each girl diving toward the nearest mesquite bush or darting into a moon shadow cast by a boulder. Lindsey’s shoulder hit a rock. The nearest bush snapped. She winced in pain and inhaled the pungent scent of sage. Gloria killed the light of the one allotted flashlight.

Damn. Even if they weren’t spotted, hiding would cost them precious minutes. At sundown, Lindsey’s team, the Dianas, won the horseback relay on the Sonoran Loop of the competitive track. By 10:30, they had come in second on the bicycle course. This put them in a close second overall with the Persephones, their most serious competition. With a bit harder push, they could capture the lead. All girls at the AthenaAcademy for the Advancement of Women were assigned upon admission to a support groupa sort of team or coven or sisterhoodand each group picked their name from a character in Greek or Roman mythology.

The Dianas were tired but pumped, and Lindsey needed the big win as much as she’d ever needed anything. Her dad would be waiting in the park’s amphitheater along with the other girls’ parents. Mom would be there, too, of course, but Dad would be so incredibly proud of Lindsey ifno, whenthe Dianas won this major test. His high expectations for her were the main reason he’d sent her to Athena, the extremely low-profile, highly selective, and premier high school for girls in America, really in the whole world, and Lindsey simply couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing him. Not even once since she was twelve and she’d lost her nerve and didn’t even place in a skiing race had she disappointed her stern but loving dad.

She felt something, looked down, and realized that her legs were exposedand that a scorpion had crawled up onto her boot, tail raised. Lindsey froze.

The searchlight of the chopper sliced back and forth through the darkness, approaching them and driving critters skittering in the brush toward them. If the scout in the chopper ID’d the Dianas, they’d be penalized fifteen minutes. The Academy, partially supported by secret Department of Defense funding and from such government agencies as the CIA, NSA and FBI, also had close ties to nearby Luke Air Force base. The men there enjoyed helping out in the annual event.

Rachel Stein gasped and swatted at Lindsey’s shoulder. “Your legs.”

“Freeze, chicas!” Gloria commanded, just before the beam missed Rachel by inches.

They wore desert camouflage hats with leafy twigs stuck into the band, black turtleneck shirts, camo pants, fingerless black gloves and hiking boots. Each carried a two-liter water bottle, Lindsey’s now less than half full, ChapStick and simple food items. The team also carried water-based paint balloons for tagging, one knife, one pen flare and one simple first-aid kit. The designated leader always held the flashlight and the rappelling line and pitons, which had come in handy twice so far.

When the chopper finally passed, Lindsey flicked the scorpion off. She started to stand, but what felt like claws tore through her shirt. She swore. A cluster of razor-sharp thorns from a scrubby cat’s claw acacia had shredded her forearm. Man, oh, man, she hated this plant. Ecologist Edward Abbey had said that everything in the desert either “bites, stabs, sticks, stings or stinks.” He was right.

The way her classes had combined concepts, like biological adaptations and survivalist training, constantly amazed Lindsey. If women were to make things better, they had to hone every asset, every ability. Be all they could be, as her dad, a former army special forces commander, would say. Principal Christine Evans even brought in accomplished instructors to teach Lindsey’s favorite subject, art. Her dad, however, encouraged art studies only as a hobby. Mom’s income as a textbook illustrator hadn’t brought in much money and so didn’t measure up to what Dad believed Lindsey could achieve.

“Water break and alpha change,” Gloria said. “Lindsey, take us in.”

“Right.” A quick swig of water, a chunk of power bar and a handful of peanuts, and they were off again, Lindsey in the lead. “Okay, they almost caught us because we’re in the wash. We need to bend south, anyway.” She set a faster jogging pace.

The chopper followed trails and the long, meandering dry washes that gleamed white in the moonlight, the idea being to drive the five teams into challenging terrain. The WhiteTankMountains were essentially a series of ridges running east and west. The Dianas had already crossed or skirted three main ridges. With one more to go, they’d soon be in the public area with its many trails. Before coming in, though, they had to find a “treasure” in WaterfallCanyon. Each team’s prize would be in a different location and they would know it because it would bear the initial of their name.

The distant lights of Phoenix lay like a spill of diamonds to the southeast, and even in the ravines, gullies and canyons, the city’s ambient light was obvious. The girls kept Polaris shining over their left shoulders. In this park, Lindsey knew where she was, even at night. She hiked through it several times a year and had spent the previous evening poring over maps.

She risked sweeping the flashlight beam across a rocky stretch. From the other side of the ridge, coyotes suddenly yipped the way they did over a fresh kill. Chills ran up her back at the sound. She held up her hand for a stop signal, and listened hard. When the yips grew fainter, team members audibly breathed again.

Leaving the wash would slow them down but the chopper was a bigger problem. “Go!” Lindsey said, and they scrambled over the rocks toward a protected arroyo.

This was a good time for one of their cheers. In a low voice, she chanted, “Dianas know no fear!” The others responded, instantly and softly: “No way, Jose!”

Lindsey called, “Dianas persevere!”

The response: “You bet, Suzette!”

Then all together, “Go, Dianas!”

They normally screamed the last line, but now each spoke barely above a whisper. If they alerted other teams to their location they risked getting pelted with dye balloons. If yellow glow-in-the-dark paint splattered a team member’s clothing, the team would suffer a ten-minute loss for each girl hit. The Dianas were definitely the team to beat. Pelting any of them would be a bragging-rights victory. All Athena girls wanted to be like the famous Cassandra team that graduated five years ago, and the Dianas were shaping up to match the Cassandras’ exploits and achievements.

“Over rock and ridge, gully and gravel, the Daring Dianas trekked on,” Crystal said softly in her exaggerated movie voice-over tone, “jogging with goat-footed precision, panting and sweating, moving ever closer to victory.” She wanted to become a screenwriter.

Out of the inky silhouette of a stand of organ-pipe cactus, black blots seemed to spew toward them, emitting tiny screams and squeaks. Bats. Lindsey raised her arms around her head, and the high-pitched noise rose and then apparently stopped as the bats’ echo-location went into an overdrive inaudible to humans. They veered off then, shy things that they were, perhaps scared up by a great horned owl.

She’d felt no panic, no pounding pulse. Lindsey had seen only one snake so far, a mildly venomous nocturnal lyre snake coiled in a rock crevice, its head raised. She’d not even blinked as she faced its stare and directed others to move back, and then, finally, moved away herself.

Athena and the desert had been good for her courage. Understanding the desert’s creatures had erased a lot of blind fears. Snakes. Bats. Coyotes. Scorpions. She understood them now, knew how to act and so had conquered the terrors they had given her at first. She could rappel down cliffs that once would have paralyzed her. She could handle guns and knives and wield a bow and arrows. Athena girls were being prepared to protect and defend as well as change the world for the better. She did have a fear, though, that she hadn’t admitted to anyone. Little eight-legged things. Even a picture of a spider sometimes gave her goose bumps. She’d been that way since childhood. But she loved it that the other girls considered her the most daring, so if this particular hang-up ever seriously threatened to freak her out, she would just use force of will to get past it.

She inhaled deeply. The pervasive sage and creosote smells had freshened with moisture. The team crossed what Lindsey was sure was Goat Canyon Trail. When they entered the wide wash of DrippingSpringCanyon, Lindsey knew her direction was true. If all went well, they were a mere hour from the amphitheater. By 4:00 a.m., they’d found the treasure underneath dried cactus wood beneath a park sign bearing the letter D. Lindsey noted that the letter, unlike the sign, wasn’t weathered. It had been placed recently. The sign explained the formation of the “white tanks,” natural stone cisterns sculpted by flash floods. Underneath some dried cactus wood, they found their treasure: chocolate bars and something shiny. The girls gasped at the beautiful gold pendants cast with the image of Athena.

Someone hissed, their secret sound for stop. Everyone crouched and froze.

“Voices,” Portia whispered, “eight o’clock.” Heads turned west. Nothing.

And then the chopper returned, following the bends of the wash. They eased into shadows, pressed into bushes, again losing time as the chopper whomped by.

The sounds gradually faded, the team heard voices more clearly. Portia hand signaled where she thought their competitors’ course lay. Lindsey calculated her options. Since, in true Athena thinking, no points would be gained in paint-tagging another team, only a point loss in getting tagged, she would not let them be sucked into losing time in an ambush. She signaled by pointing away from the voices and toward the rocks.

Soon they were nearing the area with the most vegetation. This would probably be a shorter route in the long run, anyway. And wasn’t there a cistern, up ahead, a “white tank”?

An image of the new sign posted above their treasure flashed in her mind. Had that been a clue, the key to success from that point? Lindsey felt a flush of certainty. Going through this region of tanks was the fastest way.

Dropping down the rock face by rope took less than ten minutes. They reached a passageway so narrow, only one girl at a time could go through.

“It’s black as starless space down there,” Crystal said.

Lindsey signaled the others to wait. She moved a limb of a paloverde tree, stepped into the passage, and switched on her flashlight. Left behind, the Dianas blended into shadows. Within ten paces she came upon a rock “tank” filled with water, a deep pool of ink. It would be cold, and no telling what things lurked in it, but they’d be heroes if they pushed through and down to the amphitheater in record time.

The edges gave no footing, so the only way out was through. She shined her light into the leafy gorge beyond and saw a sight that chilled her to the bone. The beam shimmered across dozens of giant gray spiderwebs. A scream rose in her. She bit her hand in time to keep the scream inside.

Above her shoulder, a spider dropped along the rocky wall from its line of sticky web, doing a little rappelling of its own. White speckles sprinkled its body. She scurried back to the team, grateful for the dark. Otherwise, they’d see a completely white face. Her hands were sweating and her heart’s beating throbbed in her throat.

“Can’t go that way. The

uh

water

something moving in it. Like a snake.” She couldn’t return her teammates’ look of surprise, her lie forcing her gaze to the ground. She was the designated leader from this point. The decision was hers to make. Moaning quietly and sulkily complaining of lost time, the girls climbed their way back out, and when they nearly reached the top, the Persephone team popped up, whooping.

“Kowabunga!”

Paint balloons flew at the Dianas, Lindsey taking the first hit. Persephones scurried away before Dianas could reach the top and fire back. A clean getaway.

It was all Lindsey could do to keep from crying. They came in well behind the Persephones, and because of the paint splatters, their score put them at third in the overall triathlon.

“We’re so proud of you, honey,” Lindsey’s mother gushed at the closing ceremony.

She stood there with some paint still caked in her hair, wanting to disappear.

“Third, huh?” Her dad patted her on the cheek. He swiped a finger over her bangs, noting the paint. “Let’s talk about this later, before your mother and I leave. See what you could have done differently.”

She’d failed. At the big party in the gym the other girls would talk. Her father would hear about the dark passageway and about her retreat.

For two days, Lindsey could scarcely eat, and her father’s disappointed pat dug itself a nasty little spot in her memory to remind her of the costs of fear.

Chapter 1

P erfect pizza!

So many reasons to come to Naples, Lindsey thought as she finished off the final bite of a slice she’d ordered while waiting to meet her backup man. The fabulous view of Vesuvius and the bay; masterpieces at the Capodimonte Art Museum that took her right out of the here and now and into a different world; an exciting air of danger and intrigue from the city’s long history with the Mafia; and, of course, the best pizza in the world.

Eager to get into action, she drummed her fingertips on her water glass. She was waiting for Marko Savin at a patio table in the restaurant across the street from the world-famous NationalArchaeologicalMuseum where she loved to browse, on quieter days, the best finds from Pompeii and Herculaneum.

A sudden strong breeze stroked her neck. February winds off the bay could be quite chilly. Yesterday it had rained. She flipped up the collar of her black leather jacket, guessing the air temperature probably hung around fifty-six degrees. Billowy, gray clouds raced across the sky.

She pushed the plate away and took a drink of bottled water. A sturdy Chianti, as the waiter had suggested, would make the wait easier, but she needed to be at her clearheaded best for today’s buyback.

After a month of investigation and then wangling, wheeling and dealing with a thief, she would buy back a painting, a small masterpiece, for its rightful owner. She would purchase an exquisite work by Artemisia Gentileschi. The little-known oilthree feet by four feetwas entitled Cleopatra at the Bath.

Artemisia had painted this Cleopatra in 1650. Lindsey loved the artist because she was one of the few acknowledged women masters of the time. During WWII the Germans stole the painting from the parents of Lindsey’s clients. Recently, the grandson of an ex-Nazi officer who’d gone into hiding after the war had apparently stolen the piece from his own grandfather and put it up for sale on the black market. Lindsey’s underground contactswhich were extensive since she had carefully cultivated them after becoming a middle-woman in this business over five years agoranged from street sages to shady “fences” to auctioneers, cabdrivers and snooty museum buyers. One had not only been able to help her find the painting, but shared the rumor with her that the grandson, Heinie Gottschalk, wanted the money from the sale to take his little drug-running business to new highs. Or lows, depending on how you looked at it.

She sighed. Maybe that was true. Maybe not. She didn’t allow herself to judge or guess at what people did with the money exchanged in the buys. Her job was to serve clients who could not get justice through the legal system. Insurance companies, private businesses and individualsat one time or another, she’d negotiated a deal for them all. The black-market buybacks sometimes felt a little shady. After all, her clients didn’t like paying for items they rightfully owned. But if her fees sometimes felt like thievery, she at least had the consolation of knowing she was a good thief, on the side of justice.

A man at a nearby table cleared his throat and stared at Lindsey’s hand. She stopped drumming. Why hadn’t she at least ordered coffee? She recalculated the time to reach CapodimontePark, the site of the exchange. She’d set up the buyback there not just because the location was convenient and public, but also because of the poetic justice involved. The CapodimontePalace, built in the late 1700s and now the site of the art museum, displayed what was perhaps Artemisia’s best-known piece, done in the chiaroscuro style of the more famous, but in Lindsey’s opinion not more talented, Caravaggio, and entitled Judith Slaying Holophernes. Lindsey would buy back a piece of stolen art under the caring eye, so to speak, of the artist herself in the sense that Artemisia lived on in her work.

Lindsey checked her watch. 12:56. Still early. But Savin obviously wasn’t. Maybe he’d had a hard time renting a motorcycle on such short notice? She hated last-minute changes.

If she were meeting a friend or even doing business for NSINovak Sicurezza Internazionale, her father’s security companytime could be experienced Italian style

casual. She had, however, never worked with Marko Savin before, and today’s exchange, like all buys, was potentially dangerous. Everything had to be executed with care. That included timing.

When Lindsey, in a rush early this morning, had called her father from the Florence airport, explaining that a motorcycle accident resulting in a seriously pulled muscle had put her usual backup, Tito, temporarily out of commission, her dad, former Colonel Anton “K-bar” Novak, had highly recommended Marko Savin. “They don’t come better,” K-bar had said. “I can get him down to Naples for you quickly, no problem.”

She crossed her long legs the other direction, black leather pants creaking with the motion. All five-foot-nine of her was in black: black leather, a black turtleneck cashmere sweater under the jacket, black boots. She’d secured her long, dark-red hair in a French braid at the back of her head, pulling it severely away from her face and slicking her bangs away from her forehead. No gentle femininity when dealing with thieves.

Art thieves as a rule didn’t engage in violence. She didn’t anticipate any problems today, but an unbreakable rule was to show strengthand be prepared for anything. More than once, a seller had tried to double-cross her, taking the money and then attempting to flee with the art. Instant wire transfers were not as common even five years ago and unmarked cash was a terrible temptation. Twice she had barely escaped from attempts by third parties to kill both her and the seller and steal the art. You just never knew. She worked carefully. She did not take unnecessary risks.

12:58. She watched the traffic streaming past the museum, the tourists strolling in and out, and finished off her water. Some of Lindsey’s own handiwork could be seen in the museum, which gave her a thrill. Between her junior and senior years at the AthenaAcademy, she had volunteered as a gofer and assistant for an art restorer in Pompeii, and two pieces Lindsey had researched and assisted in restoring were displayed right across the street. How cool was that!

AthenaAcademy. Memories rushed her. The Dianas. The painful shame of losing the senior triathlon. The Dianas had, of course, eventually forgiven her for that awful blunder. She’d even been reinstated as “head daredevil.” But her ten-year reunion was this year, and part of her dreaded going, knowing she’d take terrible teasing. Oh, Lindsey, I’ll never forget how you looked with all that glow-in-the-dark paint splattered over your head. Ha-ha-ha.

She shook her head. Was it ever possible to fully escape shames of the past?

Time? 1:02.

A motorcycle zipped into a spot two doors down from the restaurant. A man she judged to be a couple of years older than she, shut it off and dismounted. He looked toward the restaurant, and Lindsey figured he had to be Marko Savin. She’d not only picked this time and place, she’d told her dad that she wanted Savin to rent a motorcycle, not a car. “I drive a car,” she had explained to K-bar. “Tito is always on a bike.”

Good-looking, she thought as Savin strode toward her. Confident. Maybe even cocky. That could also mean excessive risk-taker, but she would keep an open mind.

He walked straight to her, pulled out the chair opposite, and sat.

“You’re late,” she said before she could stop herself. Now why had that popped out? She hadn’t meant to launch their day with criticism.

“No, I’m not,” he countered, grinning.

Maybe she’d been thrown off stride by his looks. She took in the short-cropped dark brown hair, deep blue eyes, ever-so-male five o’clock shadow and an intriguing scar under his left eye that she immediately wanted to touch, if not kiss.

I’ve been without sex way too long.

She stuck out her wrist, displaying her black watch’s neon-blue time display, at the same moment he stuck out his wrist, displaying his silver watch’s black numerals. They both checked the time, and laughed. His watch said 1:00, hers, 1:02.

“It’s nice we’re both right,” she said, happy for a chance to get back on a positive track.

The waiter arrived. “I’m not ordering,” Marko Savin said. He had one of the most beautiful baritone voices she’d ever heard. His English had a mild Italian accent. K-bar had explained that Savin was born and raised in Venice but had traveled widely.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” she hurried on as the waiter sauntered away. “I appreciate your stepping in at the last moment.”

“When your father calls, I come. I owe him a great deal.”

“He said he found you serving in Kosovo, in the French Foreign Legion.”

He nodded. “The Legion taught me a lot, but it’s a rough crew. Working for your father’s security business is more to my taste. And it let me return to Italy.”

“What we’re doing today should be an easy job. I don’t know if Dad told you what I do as a side venture, when I’m not selling for and promoting NSI business.”

Marko Savin angled the free chair at their table and propped one booted foot on it. He wore a black leather jacket with black jeans. “He says you buy back stolen goods for their rightful owners.”

“Correct. Today I’m purchasing a painting for a million and a half American dollars.” While thinking again how wonderfully deep blue his eyes were, she nodded to the bulky white cotton satchel at her feet. It held a four-foot-long tube which, in turn, held a quality reproduction of the painting. “I’ll trade the tube in this satchel for the tube that has the original. There’s a minor difference in their labels that only I would notice.” On at least four occasions this little bit of confused identification between the original and the copy had worked to good effect for her. A way for her “steal” the painting back if the deal went bad. It might not be needed, but again, better to be prepared for all eventualities than sorry for assuming all would go well.

She explained the history of the Nazi theft of the painting.

Savin frowned. “I don’t get it. You’re paying off a thief, an ex-Nazi, for a painting he stole. Owners shouldn’t have to buy back their own stuff.”

“The owners just want their painting back.”

“Seems to me that’s a job for the authorities. They catch the bad guys, retrieve the art, return it, and punish the crooks.”

“I’m hired when owners discover that the authorities aren’t going to be able to retrieve something the owners very much want returned.”

“Isn’t that sort of interfering with a criminal investigationfor money?”

His questions were starting to annoy her. “When the authorities can’t deliver, people hire me. They’re willing to pay a substantial retrieval fee. The fee is, of course, gratifying, but the real satisfactionthe reason I take the risksis because I get to see the joy on my client’s faces when I return what they loved and thought they had lost forever. I can assure you that I only work for legitimate owners or their representatives.”

“You said the guy is a Nazi! Pretty much scum.”

She glared at him. “The seller isn’t a Nazi. His grandfather was. But, yeah, I’d deal with a Nazi. I deal with whoever has what owners want returned. And that’s why you’re here. Sometimes things can go sour. So, you in or no?”

Savin stared right back, then shrugged. “Sure.”

“Okay. Here’s the action,” she continued. “You and I go to the meet, you on the bike, me in my rental car. We arrive a minute apartyou firstand we make no connection. They aren’t to know I have muscle behind me. I’ve made my reputationI am the best and intend to stay that wayby never coming armed and making certain that buyers and sellers get what they expect. I presume you’re carrying.”

He patted his chest where under the leather jacket she assumed he had a gun. She’d already figured out from the bulge on the calf of the leg propped on the chair that he carried a knife.

“That’s fine,” she continued. “But there’s to be no use of weapons unless it looks like someone is going to kill me. Okay?”

“Got it.”

“What I do, and my reputation, depends on being clever, not violent, but I will get the painting back, and I will not get killed doing it.”

He smiled. It made his blue eyes twinkle.

From the white satchel she pulled out a map of the CapodimontePark grounds. She explained where he would park and where Gottschalk was supposed to meet heron an access road about a hundred and fifty yards away.

“If I need help, I’ll jab my fist into the air. Or,” she slid a small black box to Savin across the table and as he reached for it, his finger brushed the back of her hand. She felt a quick spurt of warmth to her face, her body’s response to a profound sense of pleasure at his touch.

Stunned, she drew in a slow breath, then, “If I press this,” she touched the center of a silver moon pendant, “the green light on your box will go red.” The slim moon disk contained a built-in transponder, activated by a three-second touch.

“Don’t come in unless I signal, okay? Any questions?”

He shook his head, then said, “I like your earrings. They’re exactly the color of your eyes.”

For a moment she couldn’t find words, surprised at the sudden shift of topic and tone. Her earrings, a gift from K-bar and her mom when she graduated from the Academy, were half-inch, oval studs set in silver. “They’re gray star sapphires. From India.”

“Very beautiful.”

She felt herself warming, knew that her face was reddening. How embarrassing.

She checked her watch. “It’s time to go.” She lay ample euros on the table, grabbed the satchel and, keeping her eyes off of Marko Savin, headed for the street.

Chapter 2

L indsey drove the rented red Fiat uphill from the center of Naples through heavy traffic. The city spread across hills that allowed those spectacular vistas of Vesuvius rising in all its imposing splendor, an ancient sentinel watching over the bay, its peak shrouded in clouds. Everything was going well, even on schedule.

She kept Marko Savin in sight all the way to CapodimontePark. With Tito, she stayed focused on the deal, but thoughts of the surprising rush of pleasure she’d felt at Marko Savin’s touch kept intruding.

K-bar had said Savin wasn’t married. She couldn’t resist wondering what his “type” might be. She had always wanted to share her passions and joys and hardships with a special companion. So far, however, the only man she’d ever had a serious relationship with wanted her to quit taking the risks involved in her art buybacks. And he hadn’t even known about the sometimes extremely dangerous courier jobs she did, in secret, for the U.S. government as an Oracle agent.

She knew other Athena women who had sacrificed their lives of high risk for family, but that would never be Lindsey. Retrieving art, sometimes masterpieces, stolen and precious to their owners, gave her life meaning. Most of her assignments as a courier were important, some critical to U.S. security, and that also gave her life substance. This was who she was.

Saying no to the possibility of love and a family of her own had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. Sometimes, alone at night, she would get the blues and think she’d made a mistake, but, she’d inherited her mother’s cheerfulness, and in the morning she’d look forward to the day’s action.

No one in this life gets everything.

She pulled over and waited, carefully watching for one minute. Maybe she could risk some fun and adventure with this man. No ties. She would very much like thatif he showed any interest. He had seemed to. Why else comment on her earrings and her eyes with a look that said he couldn’t stop mentally undressing her?

When the sixty seconds had passed, she drove through the entry and through extensive grounds with spacious lawns, now brown with winter, passing groves of leafless trees and a number of old buildings, including the palace that was now a museum, all of them tied together by looping access roads.

Heinie Gottschalk was waiting at the prearranged spot, seated in the back of a black Alfa Romeo sedan, parked as directed and accompanied only by his driver. She’d agreed that Heinie could bring one man with him and had said, “Sure, he can be armed.” Her main line of defense against treachery by Heinie, or any seller, didn’t rest on strong-arm measures. She could be counted on by both sides to be an honest broker, no violence, no treachery and total discretion.

She parked the Fiat in front of the Alfa Romeo and turned off the motor. A hundred and fifty yards away, Marko sat on his bike, apparently studying a map or newspaper.

Carrying the white satchel with its slightly protruding tube, she strode to the Alfa. The driver stepped out and opened the rear door behind the driver’s seat. Lindsey slid inside, sharing the seat with Heinie. He was perhaps twenty-five with neat shoulder-length blond hair and a flashy pinstripe suit. The diamond stud in his ear had to be at least a carat and a half.

Heinie spoke English, in which he was fluent. “So, we’re ready to trade?”

“Let me see the painting,” she countered. As he reached for it, she slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and palmed the tiny GPS transponder, the size of a dime. She had to slip it into the tube with the genuine painting and quickly because in the end, he might refuse to leave her alone with Cleopatra.

He handed her the tube she had supplied to him. “I need to have a few moments in private to inspect it,” she said.

“Why the fuck would you need to inspect it? You think I try to cheat you? I know your reputation and I deal in good faith.”

“Others have tried to cheat. Before we part, you will be able to verify that the wire transfer has been made. Right now I verify the painting’s authenticity. It’s all part of keeping everyone honest.”

“What’s in your tube there?”

“The tube has an accurate copy of the painting, in case I need to check any details. You may search it if you’d like.”

Heinie didn’t move, as rigid as if he were made of stone.

“If I can’t inspect the painting in private, Heinie, I won’t wire the money. You need to let me do my job. You and your man should stand at the front of the car.”

Finally he opened his door and hauled himself out. He signaled and the two of them moved to the front of the car, looking across the grounds. Looking toward Marko, actually.

Lindsey had studied art and art forgery. She knew all the techniques used to establish whether a statue, painting, lithograph, or other work, was the genuine article: pigment analysis, infrared analysis, or X-ray fluorescence to determine the age of the canvas or if metals in a sculpture were too pure. Sometimes these methods could pick up the artist’s fingerprints left in the paint. “Craquelure” was the study of the distinctive network of fine cracks on very old pieces that were virtually impossible to replicate. She could even identify unique brushwork and perspectives to see if these were consistent with known genuine pieces. The problem with this was that forgers made the same analysis, and great forgers were able to re-create them. Even experts could be fooled. But none of these fancy techniques were needed for the Artemisia.

She opened the tube he’d given her, tilted it, and the painting slid into her hands. As she set the base of the tube on the floor, she dropped the GPS into it and heard it hit with a quiet thunk on the bottom.

She unrolled the painting just enough to expose the back side, lower right corner. From her pocket she took a small lighter, and held it close to the painting. Her client had informed her that only the family knew the painting had been signed on the back using urine with the three words, Owned by Genovesa.

Invisible writing had a long history. Milk, vinegar, fruit juices and urine, all had been used and all darkened when heated. The words soon appeared.

“Hello, honey,” she said, longing to pull it out and gaze. She put away the lighter, returned the painting to its tube and knocked on her window.

Heinie returned to her. “Satisfied?” he asked in a sulky tone.

Gee, might he have been raised as a spoiled brat? She ignored him and pulled out her BlackBerry. He watched her intently as she keyed in the information that would transfer one and a half million American dollars to a bank in the Cayman Islands. She waited. Finally she read aloud, “Transfer complete.”

It was his turn to verify. He started to punch keys in his own communicator but the driver, looking behind them, yelled, and as he fumbled to pull his gun, a hulking figure in black rushed him. The door beside her flew open and a big hand yanked her out of the car. Another grabbed Heinie. She stared into the black barrel of a Beretta semiautomatic pistol. The hulk in black slugged Heinie’s driver. He dropped to the ground. In the distance a motorcycle roared to life.

“Du verdammten schwein,” a gray-haired old man screeched at Heinie.

A dark-gray Daimler now blocked the Alfa Romeo. There were four of them, including the old man. She figured the old guy had to be Heinie’s granddad.

Hellfire and damnation!

Two of the old Nazi’s goons grabbed both tubes and her satchel. Another clubbed Heinie with the butt of his own gun. Heinie’s yowl was earsplitting and he fell to his knees.

Clearly the old man intended to steal the painting back from his grandson. She pointed to the tube holding the original and shouted, “Sie konnen nicht mit dem Bild”

She was going to tell them that she had placed an incendiary in the container, and she would incinerate the picture rather than let them take it again. Not true, of course, but she’d used the ploy before to get the upper hand. The key, after she calmed everyone down, was to offer more money.

Instead, Marko Savin, racing in a loud roar across the lawn, distracted everyone. Heinie’s driver, having regained his senses, pulled his gun and blew a hole right between the eyes of one of the old Nazi’s men.

Chaos! The old man and his remaining two guards sprinted to their car, each clutching a tube, as Heinie staggered to his feet. Lindsey ran after them, but had to duck behind the Alfa Romeo when both goons turned and started firing.

Marko brought the motorcycle to a sliding stop on its side with the motor still roaring. Ducking bullets, he dived behind her Fiat. The old Nazi and his goons made a U-turn, running up onto the lawn on the other side of the access road, and burned rubber as they headed toward the park’s exit. Both tubes were gone. Artemisia’s Cleopatra. Gone.

Chapter 3

L indsey stood dumbstruck for a second and then turned to Marko, furious. “I didn’t give you the signal.”

“I consider drawn guns a signal.”

“They wouldn’t have hurt me.”

“How the hell can you know that?”

“Later! We have to catch them. Take the bike.”

He had the good sense not to argue. She leaped on behind him and hugged his waist. They reached the exit. No sign of the gray Daimler. They could go right, left, or straight ahead, heavy traffic in all three directions.

“What now?” he called back to her over the motorcycle’s noise.

She pulled out the BlackBerry, pushed three buttons, and picked up the signal from the GPS. “Left,” she said. “And hit it. Go through stops when you can.”

Her pulse raced as he wove in and out around cars, bicycles, pedestrians and buses. They started south on the Corso Amadeo Di Savola, but soon the GPS signal indicated that the Daimler turned west. She pointed right, toward the next cross street.

“I see them,” he called out. “Two blocks ahead.”

For agonizing minutes, they made headway, then traffic would interfere and they’d drop behind only to gain again. After fifteen minutes they reached the section of Naples called Vomero, an elevated area filled with views in all directions where they kept up the crazy cat and mouse in a heavily commercial area with all sorts of offices and pedestrians.

They sat waiting at a red light, the Daimler only a block ahead. “Hang on,” Marko called to her.

He gunned the bike and they blasted straight through the cross traffic, barely avoiding a truck.

The light turned green for the Daimler; it moved ahead. Marko skimmed the outside of their lane and then swung into oncoming traffic to go around two trucks blocking their way. She looked forward over his shoulder, right into the grill of an oncoming van whose driver was frantically honking his horn. She sucked in her breath as they zipped back into their own lane. She could hear the van’s driver cursing.

They were within a limousine’s length of the Daimler. “I’m going to stop their car,” Marko yelled, and she sensed he’d drawn his gun.

“It’s too dangerous for pedes”

She heard the shot. The Daimler’s left rear tire blew, and the car jerked left and then back to the right. Normal traffic parted to flow around it. The driver pulled the Daimler to the curb and everyone bailed out, including the old man.

The three thieves ran into the cross street. Marko stopped the bike. Lindsey jumped off. Together they dogged the three men who suddenly veered left. The men ran past the ticket booth to the Via Toledo Funicular, and shoved their way into a car. Lindsey watched in horror as the door closed behind the three men, and the funicular began to descend. Another cable car would not arrive and then begin the steep descent, she knew, for at least ten minutes. All three men grinned back at her. One held up one of the tubes.

We’re going to lose them! I’m going to lose the Artemisia!

Her stomach twisted.

“Shit!” Marko said.

Lindsey scanned their surroundings, fighting disappointment, and saw that a long flight of stairs descended alongside the funicular. She pointed.

“The bike,” Marco exclaimed.

They ran back to the bike, and Marko drove them to the head of the sidewalk. “Hold on tight,” he said, stating the obvious.

They bumped their way down the stairs, which thankfully had few people coming up. Almost all the foot traffic was heading down and Marko stayed well to the left, yelling in Italian for them to clear out of the way.

She ignored the shocked stares of the people they passed. She accidentally bit her tongue, tasted salty blood. Too soon they had to detour to a side street, then an alley, but they didn’t lose sight of the funicular. Finally they caught up and as they passed the cable car, she took perverse pleasure in the amazed looks on the faces of the three men. She prepared herself for one hell of a fight.

“No gun,” she said to Marko, thinking of the hordes of people who would be waiting at the bottom to board.

Marko nodded.

When the three thugs entered the street, Lindsey and Marko sprang after them. The old man didn’t even try to run. She singled out the smaller thug, and Marko headed for the larger one. They were, apparently, woefully out of shape. Her man turned and charged her. She landed a forward kick to his diaphragm and he went down with the follow-up chop to the back of his neck. She kicked him over onto his side and, as he gasped for air, she grabbed the tube he carried, and took his gun.

Marko dispatched the man with the other tube, apparently with the same ease. He mounted the bike. Panting, laughing and flushed with a sense of triumph, Lindsey hopped on behind, clutched both tubes fiercely, and they took off. Hot damn, she’d done it again.

“Ooo-rah!” she whooped as they passed a row of plump elderly women in black dresses waiting in line at the funicular.

Given all the havoc they had left in their path, perhaps including a dead body in the park, witnesses might be describing a woman in black leather and red hair and a man also in black and looking like a criminal. The authorities might very well be watching all transport stations, so they ruled out getting onto a plane dressed as they were. She had used a fake ID and paid cash for the Fiat so she left it to the police to return it. She and Marko picked out a small, no-name store that sold men’s and women’s Levi’s jeans and sweatshirts. At another store they bought new clothes and duffel bags for their leather ones. She bought a cheap black wig and black eyebrow pencil and he bought reading glasses. At 4:30 p.m. they caught a flight back to Florence.

On the plane, with her treasure secure in the bin overhead, Lindsey ordered that Chianti she’d missed with her pizza, and Marko joined her. She explained what she had intended to do in case of troublethreaten to incinerate the painting if the old Nazi and his gang thought they could take it from her, and offer them more money instead. “It’s worked for me before.”

“Tell you what. I apologize. I acted from the gut when I saw the gun.”

“Well, I admit that you saved my client any extra money.” She smiled. She liked a man who felt strong enough in his masculinity to actually apologize. She sipped the wine, thinking that Marko was earning points rapidly. He’d shown himself to be bold. Smart. Courageous. And a damn good fighter.

“Your dad told me you were tough,” he said and then laughed, that beautiful baritone. “I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that karate kick.”

She shrugged with a smile. Like K-bar, he was impressed with her daring.

“I’d like to see you again, Lindsey. Would you like to go skydiving tomorrow? I have a buddy, a hotdog instructor.”

Her hand froze in midair. She slowly lowered the wine-glass. She’d never been skydiving. The idea was

pretty intimidating. She felt her chest tightening, a sure sign her body didn’t really like the idea. Why had he picked skydiving, for heaven’s sake?

“According to K-bar you’re a real risk-taker,” Marko added. “Ever been skydiving?”

She shook her head. Of course, her father would describe her as a risk-taker. Wasn’t that the image she always projected to him? Part of what he admired about her?

“Okay. Skydiving sounds fine. Let’s do it.”

Marko explained what she ought to wear and that he’d pick her up at 10:00. For the rest of the trip, they talked about his joining the French Foreign Legion, the action he’d seen in Afghanistan, the Ivory Coast and Kosovo.

“Why did you join?”

“Oh

” His jaws flexed, as if gritting his teeth. “My family background is a little on the shady side. I

wanted to break away.” He smiled with a hint of mischief. “And I wanted to see the world.”

And he wants to keep things vague, she thought as the plane began its descent, so she asked no more questions, and he didn’t offer any more information about himself. He’d left his car, a very sexy black Maserati GranSport Spyder with a red-and-black interior, at the airport in a high security lot. Whatever he did for K-bar must pay very well, or else he’d lied about separating himself from his family background. You didn’t make that kind of money in the FFL.

Lindsey used a motorbike or taxis for transport in Florence and had taken a taxi to the airport. Who could resist a ride with a handsome man in a fantastic car?

They drove in quiet, comfortable silence. She also liked a man who didn’t feel that heor shehad to talk all the time.

It was still dusk when they stood at the door to her apartment. Her six-room spread on the top floor of a six-story building on the south side of the River Arno nestled below the hilltop where the Piazza Michelangelo offered thousands of tourists one-eighty-degree views. From her dining room window, she could see the Ponte Vecchio. She was tempted to show Marko her view.

He hesitated, body language betraying his desire to be invited in. He looked past her at her painting hanging in the entry. “That’s quite a work of art.”

Nice try. She smiled. “Thanks.”

“You didn’t

did you paint it?”

She nodded and they shared a long moment. But she wasn’t ready to take things to the next step. Not yet. “A long day,” she said, smiling. “I look forward to tomorrow.”

He pulled her to him and kissed her, a long, delicious, hungry kiss that sent waves of heat through her body. He didn’t move his hands over her, just held her gently.

“See you tomorrow, then.” He turned and walked away with Lindsey still savoring his kiss.

Right. They’d be jumping out of a plane together. Was she beyond insane?

Still thinking of Marko, she pulled some leftovers from her refrigerator and turned on the TV while finishing the last of the pasta salad. An Italian sitcom. She made a point of watching these to hone her ability to understand Italian humor. A glass of wine and more thoughts of Marko. She switched to CNN, and as she rinsed her plate in the kitchen, the television’s commentary riveted her.

“

students from an exclusive high school near Phoenix, Arizona, AthenaAcademy , were abducted and have been missing for more than twenty-four hours.”

Athena girls? She raced back toward the TV. The screen showed photos of two smiling teenagers. “It is now believed that the girls were taken to Colombia. The abductor hasn’t demanded any ransom, Academy principal Christine Evans reported.” And that was the end of the report.

Christine being quoted on CNN! Dear God.

Christine Evans had been the AthenaAcademy’s principal since the school opened. She’d accepted the position after retiring as a captain from the army, having been blinded in one eye by a training accident. She not only had the job of hiring staff and running the school; Christine was in charge of assessing the students for potential work in government security agencies after their graduation. The Academy had been partially funded from the “discretionary” (unlisted and unexplained portions) of the budget of the DoD from the beginning. One pivotal Academy founder had actually been the head of the CIA. He realized the potential value to the United States of a military-type prep academy for women. Many Athena graduates worked for various government agencies. Lindsey, herself, was now a courier for Oracle because Christine Evans had singled Lindsey out as a potential recruit.

The news report had said Colombia. That didn’t sound like a simple kidnapping, Lindsey decided as she walked into the home office where she spent so many of her waking hours. Her computer suite offered three oversize, linked monitors. She could drag her mouse from the left, continue through the center screen and end all the way over on the right screen. One of her art projects could be going on one screen, the Internet or television on another and documents on the last.

She immediately logged onto AA.gov. This Web site linked Athena grads to each other, ran a terrific, newsy blog and offered a host of services like links to articles on up-to-date equipment and weapons, or even where to get the best health insurance.

The featured item on the home page offered a new video of Christine. She looked tired, making her eyelid droop a little over her blind eye. In her early sixties, she was still an attractive and healthy-looking woman, barely changed over the last ten years. Lindsey clicked on the feed and watched her former principal express her sorrow and then reveal more details of the kidnapping.

“You all know how hard the Academy works to keep a low profile. Shannon Connor’s dogged pursuit of us on the ABS network is quite regrettable.”

The Web site wasn’t secure. Lindsey wouldn’t learn much more there. She checked her e-mail and sure enough, she had one from Christine. The time in Phoenix, at the Academy, would be just after 10:00 a.m. “Callprivate,” was all the e-mail said, the code instructions for using her secure cell phone and the secure satellite connection. Lindsey placed the call and Christine’s secretary answered.

“We’re putting out an alert to a special list of Athena grads, Lindsey. Hold this line and I’ll transmit Christine’s message. It’s all the information we have so far.”

“Holding,” Lindsey said. Then she listened as an obviously prerecorded message created for this secure line came on.

“I fear,” the Athena leader said, “that there is a drastic breach of security in this kidnapping. Those of you who have followed the tragic and bizarre story of Athena graduate Lorraine Rainy’ Miller Carrington and her egg babies’ will understand why.”

Lindsey had indeed followed the story of the ova that had been stolen years ago during a clandestine operation from a very young Athena student, Lorraine “Rainy” Carrington. She’d been only twelve. Much later, events revealed that a perverse scientist had genetically manipulated the stolen “eggs” in a way intended to enhance the resulting children with special talents. He’d then implanted the modified eggs in unsuspecting surrogate mothers. The insider term for these girls was “egg babies.” The full extent and results of these experiments were still largely unknown, although the girls that were known to have resulted from them were indeed gifted with some extraordinary abilities. The genetic modification process apparently only worked on eggs with two X chromosomes.

“The abductor,” the recorded message continued, “attempted to take three of our girlsKayla Ryan’s daughter, Jazz, and two others, Teal Arnett and Lena Poole. Jazz is fourteen. Lena is fifteen, and Teal is seventeen. They’d gone together to the movies when someone abducted them.” For a moment Christine’s voice rose. Then, “Thank God, Jazz escaped. This is perhaps the only fortunate thing to happen so far.”

Lindsey clicked through the Athena Academy Web site, searching out the girls’ pictures as the recording continued.

“I’m especially concerned about the lack of a ransom demand, deeply troubled. I’ll provide updates on this secure connection as soon as possible. We’re asking you to keep your antennae tuned for any clue as to the perpetrators and the whereabouts of the captives.

“As this kidnapping demonstrates, our days of keeping an extremely low profile may be waning. You wonderful young women are becoming a force to be reckoned with around the world. One final thought. The good guys and the bad guys are taking note of the increasing numbers of Athena alumni in positions of power and influence. Allison Gracelyn of the National Security Agency is here with us. Katie Rush, who is with the FBI and an expert on missing persons, has made extraordinary progress and is now in Colombia. Together with our Athena Force,’ we’re going to get our girls back.”

The recording ended. Lindsey hung up. She studied the faces of the three girls in their class pictures and bookmarked the sites.

What a mess. Lindsey knew that Rainy’s eggs had been harvested in secret. They lied to her, told her that she’d had an appendectomy. She never found out, before she was killed, that she had three daughters. The scientist at Lab 33what was his name? Aldrich something. But the “egg babies” controversy was over and done with. A year ago they shut the lab down. What in heaven’s name was going on?

Lindsey wanted to do follow-up research immediately, but a wave of fatigue leached away her concentration. And tomorrow she would jump into the sky. Of course, she wanted to look good on her way downbefore she splattered.

Marko had already seen her hair sleeked back, which made her look almost brunette. She’d do the French braid but let wisps fall at the hairline. She was tired. Nevertheless, she exfoliated her face. Then her whole body. God, her nails were a mess. She did a quick sport manicure. And touched up her pedicure.

It was 11:30. She sighed. Time to crash.

Ooooh. Bad choice of words.

In her sleep that night, she dreamed of falling.

Chapter 4

G esů Cristo e mamma-goddamn-mia, Marko thought as he drove to his place.

Lindsey

He absolutely shouldn’t mess with the boss’s daughter. He loved women and plunged wholeheartedly into passionate relationships that burned out in disappointingly short times. If that happened with Lindsey, K-bar would never again give him the primo clients, let alone hire him to head up the new private extraction team. Hell, he’d probably fire him, and blacklist him from the personal security business. Actually, K-bar was capable of much worse.

The tires of the Maserati screeched as Marko took a corner too fast. He paid little attention. His mind was on other things.

Okay, say the passion didn’t burn out, he said to himself. K-bar would do almost anything to protect Lindsey from winding up with the wrong man. He probably had her lined up to meet rich sons of diplomats, or some of his wealthy clients.

Marko was pretty sure he wasn’t the right long-term guy for Lindsey. Yeah, they had the adrenaline rush thing going. But she was so well educated, classy. The final shock had been her painting. She was an artist, too. That painting

he kept picturing the way she’d captured the moon through branches

.

At least he’d impressed her with the skydiving idea. How many sons of diplomats could offer that?

He pulled into the garage he rented and walked three blocks to his tiny second-floor apartment overlooking an alley. He’d put all his money into the car. Such pleasure it gave him to send his mama a picture of himself beside it and tell her he’d earned it. She alone in his family would be proud of him. The rest of the lot were exactly the kind of people Lindsey dealt with in buybacksthe thieves, not the clients.

Marko came from immigrant trash, though his great-great-grandfather had been part of the Russian aristocracy before WWI. Lindsey’s draw was more than skin-deep. She was everything he admired, maybe even what he wanted to be. Marko had been a poor soldier just out of the FFL when K-bar hired him six years ago. For the last three years, he’d been earning real money. He could speak the untutored Russian of his family, Italian, of course, French and English. He knew he could advance in a business like K-bar’s. He just had to get rid of his rough edges.

He called his friend Claudio who said there was a jump tomorrow and Marko and his girl were welcome. Marko hung up and stared down at the shabby tan carpet and then out into the night sky above the neighboring building. By what mysterious process had he looked at Lindsey and seen his own ambition and potential?

Lindsey looked a bit pale and didn’t say much on the forty-minute drive down al autostrada except to ask how many jumps he’d made.

“The next will be my 578th,” Marko said before reviewing safety issues and explaining about the drop zone. “You’re going to love it.”

They reached the little airport at Arezzo for an adventure in paracadutismo, parachuting, at 10:45 a.m. He and Claudio personally packed the chute for the tandem jump he and Lindsey would make.

Marko said, “A certified parachute rigger put in an altitude-sensitive device that opens automatically if for any reason we’re both unable to pull the cords.”

Lindsey looked even paler.

“But we will both be acutely conscious and loving it,” Marko said.

Lindsey laughed nervously. She pulled a bright yellow nylon suit over her tight but stretchy black ski clothes. Marko stepped into his orange suit. Several divers were boarding the small plane, whooping and laughing in their wild bicolor jumpsuits of turquoise and white, red and purple.

“They’ll jump ahead of us,” Marko said. He attached the tandem harness straps to Lindsey around the tops of each thigh and over each shoulder and under her arms. The tight shoulder straps emphasized her breasts, which he’d already surveyed more than once.

After a few more instructions, their plane was in the air, climbing and making a wide loop to the south, passing by the northern shore of Lake Trasimeno, a blue mirror of the sky. He pointed to Isola Maggiore, MajorIsland. “Not a very imaginative name.”

“In Italian, everything sounds romantic. It doesn’t have to sound imaginative,” Lindsey said.

At an altitude of six thousand meters, Marko attached Lindsey’s clips to his own straps in four places, powerfully connecting the two of them. He stood beside her as the others were lining up beside the transport door. One of the jumpers accidentally bumped Lindsey backward, thrusting her body against Marko. He was surprised to feel her shaking. Could the female daredevil be frightened?

He spoke softly into her ear, “Would you like to just watch this first time?”

She looked at him over her shoulder. “Of course not! I’m making this jump.” She shoved her goggles down over her eyes.

He did likewise. The door opened and the formation divers leaped from the plane, yelling and whooping. The plane began dropping and quickly reached five thousand meters.

“Okay, your turn,” Claudio yelled.

“Jump,” Marko said.

They made a paired spring into the sky. Arms like wings, they leaped into icy wind. In belly-to-earth position, they would drop for sixty seconds. Strands of her hair slipped out and lashed at his face a little. Her legs spread apart, and he hovered over her as if about to mount her in their free fall over the patchwork terrain below. They kept touching in places, her backside bumping at his groin. It was both erotic and exhilarating.

To the south, puffy arcs of color opened. The formation flyers. Marko yanked their cord also. With a jerk, their canopy wing chute opened. He held Lindsey around the waist to guide her upright. They floated gloriously as the earth approached, bumped down only a few feet off the assigned target.

Lindsey came alive, screaming with delight and laughing. After he’d gathered the chute, she grabbed him and planted an amazing kiss on his lips. No tongue, but full of passion.

When she pulled back they both grinned, a distinct sense of shared awareness in the moment of pleasure.

Back in Florence in the late afternoon, she didn’t invite him in. She took his hand and tugged him in. They flew at each other the second the door closed. He moved his hands over her slim waistline, her hips, her firm breasts. He was about to take her sweater off when the phone rang. She kept kissing him, but after the fourth ring, she pulled away.

“I guess I’d better get that,” she said.

He laid his head back on the sofa in frustration as she answered and then watched as she grew more and more focused. “I’ll call you right back.”

“Marko, something has come up. I have to take this call and then get to work.”

He looked at her, groggy with lust. “This is American humor, right?”

She shook her head, leaned over and kissed him, a thorough hello kiss, not a goodbye buss. “I can’t thank you enough for today.”

“That seems to be true,” he said with mock sadness. “When can I see you again?”

“Soon. I hope.”

His Maserati was inadequate comfort on the cold ride home. What could be more important to her than making love to him at that moment? Mamma goddamn mia.

Chapter 5

L indsey closed the door and sagged against it. I was scarily close to hopping into bed with Marko Savin. I must be out of my mind!

She’d been on the verge of doing something she would have surely regretted. It was way too soon for that much intimacy. Maybe it was the intoxication of the day that had her close to losing herself with him. She’d sipped the old adrenaline cocktail and loved it. “Adrenaline fright” was definitely an acquired taste. She’d almost wet her pants with relief after they landed and had forced herself to jump again to banish any remaining doubts about her nerve. What a thrill! That’s what happened when you conquered your weaknesses. Just like K-bar said.

Thank heavens Allison Gracelyn had interrupted before Marko had slipped her sweater over her head. Stopping at that point was sensible. Sane.

With Marko’s taste, like an especially sweet orange, still lingering, the feeling of his touch still fresh in her memory, Lindsey dialed the secure number Allison had given her some time ago. The gifted computer programmer worked as a code-breaker at the National Security Agency in Ft. Meade, Maryland, and lived in Chevy Chase. There was only a six-hour difference between Florence and Maryland.

They exchanged quick hellos. “Are you still with Christine in Phoenix?” Lindsey asked. Lindsey pictured Allison and her straight, shoulder-length hair, the soft yet keenly intelligent eyes.

“Yes. I’d appreciate your attention on this, Lindsey. Have you followed the kidnapping?”

“Yes. I called the Academy and listened to the recording by Christine. What’s the latest?”

Lindsey grabbed a diet soda and headed into her office.

“FBI Agent Katie Rush traced Teal Arnett and Lena Poole to a gang of Colombian lowlifes.”

Lindsey typed in her AA.gov password and then brought up the photos of the girls, their names listed below their photos.

“The short version,” Allison said, “is that Katie went to Colombia and helped to free Lena, but Teal stayed with her kidnappers on purpose.”

“A seventeen-year-old girl didn’t escape when she had the chance?” Lindsey studied Teal’s image. She looked like a normal teenager. Blond-streaked chestnut hair pulled back in a ponytail, clear hazel eyes, vivacious. And yet, those cheekbones

There was some American Indian blood in this girl somewhere. “She looks like the kind of person people call an old soul.’ Is she

?”

“Teal is definitely special. I’ll get to that in a minute. Lena says Teal thinks there is something much bigger going on. Something

well, strange and terrifying was how she put it. The good news is that we know that Teal is on a plane from Colombia to London. I’ve contacted the British SAS and called in some favors. They’ll have a team waiting when the plane lands, rescue Teal, and arrest the kidnappers. I’ve also twisted the arm of an NSA friend and we’ve got a secure satellite that will be able to pick up the plane’s arrival at Heathrow.”

“It looks like things will be okay, then. If you have the kidnappers, you can get to the bottom of this.” Lindsey sat back, swigged her soda, and wondered where she fit in.

“Yes, and no. Teal has proven psychic abilities.”

Wow. She picked up a pencil. “Okay.”

“And, Teal, like Lena, is an amazingly fast runner. Amazingly fast.”

Now tapping the pencil, Lindsey suddenly felt the conversation wasn’t going in a direction she’d anticipated.

“Jazz was the third girl. Like all Athena girls, Jazz is very bright and has her own special gifts, but nothing beyond the ordinary. We think the attempt to take her was accidental. The kidnappers wanted Teal and Lena. The girls were lured to a pickup location. And Teal and Lena share something else. In addition to having these standout abilities, there is this profoundly disturbing fact: Their mothers underwent fertility treatmentsat the very same clinic, the Women’s FertilityCenter in Zuni, New Mexico.”

“It’s unusual. Seems a rather large coincidence. But why so disturbing?”

“Lindsey, the clinic may have connections to Lab 33. We’re starting to think that they may be Lab 33 babies.”

“Oh, good God.” Lindsey leaned forward in the chair and tossed the pencil onto the desk. “More egg babies?”

“Exactly. An Athena grad, Kim Valenti, is working with Lynn White to decipher the files that were rescued when we took down Lab 33 a year and a half ago.” Rage and disgust boiled in Allison’s voice. “There’s still much that we don’t know about Aldrich Peters’ genetic research. The encryption is difficult to break. Very frustrating for Kim and Lynn. Also, a lot of the data was destroyed. But, yes, it appears that Peters didn’t just harvest Rainy’s eggs. He took and then secretly manipulated the eggs of other women, as well.”

“That’s sick. Disgusting.” Lindsey felt a chill on the back of her neck. “Isn’t Lynn one of Rainy’s daughters’?”

“Yes. It’s a mess. If you knew Rainy’s daughters, or Teal and Lena, you’d say it’s a wonderful thing that they were born. But the method, if it’s true that they are genetically modified egg babies created by Peters, is absolutely abhorrent.” Allison’s anger shifted to sadness. “If Rainy were alive, she’d be utterly confounded.”

Lindsey recalled something that might explain Allison’s deep passions. “Weren’t you especially close to Rainy?”

“She was my best friend. She was the senior mentor to the Cassandras and every one of them will tell you that she made them the tight-knit, formidable group they became. A most extraordinary woman.” She paused, sighed. “Rainy’s murderI still can’t talk about it.”

Last year, when the new science building was dedicated to Rainy, Lindsey had attended the ceremony. “At the dedication, I actually met Lynn. She seemed normal

but she’s” It seemed somehow rude to call Lynn genetically modified. “Enhanced in what way?”

“All three of Rainy’s daughters, Lynn, Faith and Dawn, are a continual amazement. It’s mind-blowing. Lynn is blindingly fast. Faith is psychic. But Dawn’s abilities to heal herself are astonishing.”

“How do I fit in?”

“We’re beginning to worry that somehow, someone from the outside has learned of Teal and Lena’s talents, and that’s why they were taken. Katie is working with a psychic who is occasionally in contact with Teal. That’s how they located the plane.”

Lindsey still couldn’t see a way to help.

“Katie thinks the kidnappers are middlemen,” Allison continued, “and that they very likely don’t know the real value of the girls or who is really behind the kidnapping.”

“Ah!”

“Yes. That’s why I’ve called you.”

“You want me to scour my European underground contacts and see what’s up?” “They are going to London. That suggests that a British, or possibly other European party, is behind the whole thing. See what you can find out. Particularly anything with a whiff of genetics involved. I’ve set up a site here at the NSA that holds everything we have about Lab 33. I’ll be updating it regularly about the kidnapping, as well. I’ll have some photos of and files on the few individuals we know who worked with Peters and escaped the lab bust. We’ve also been able to decipher scraps of information on the genetic manipulation process. We know what was done, but not how. If you have any questions, call me. Katie and I watched from a satellite when the private jet carrying Teal took off from Bogotá. As I said already, we know the flight plan they filed said London’s Heathrow as the final destination. Do you want to watch the arrival when the SAS guys pick her up in London? The plane is due to land around six this evening London time, seven your time.”

“Absolutely.”

Allison provided a Web address and two passwords that would give Lindsey access to the data on Lab 33, the kidnapping and the feeds from the NSA satellite. Lindsey checked the clock on her computer screen. The plane would reach its destination in about twenty minutes.

“By the way,” Allison added, “Lena said the kidnappers videotaped her and Teal using their abilities during staged escape attempts. This makes me think they wanted proof of what the girls could do.”

Lindsey shook off another chill on her neck. “I understand.”

They exchanged farewells and Allison hung up. Lindsey stood and stretched. She felt exhausted. The adrenaline rush from the skydiving, and from all that lovely physical contact with Marko, must have expended itself. She needed a caffeine hit before she spent time with the Lab 33 file.

As she made her way to the kitchen, a sad weight pressed on her heart for Teal, who would probably never know who her real father was. And who, if she was ever told the manner of her conception, would surely have some psychological hurdles to conquer.

Alternately sipping the strong cappuccino and scrolling through the kidnapping file, Lindsey learned a bit more. Most interesting, the psychic who’d worked with Katie Rush, Stefan Blackman, was pretty certain Teal could only make that kind of strong contact with someone like him, or like Teal herself.

She opened the file on Lab 33 and started to read about Aldrich Peters and his egg babies. At ten to seven, she put the NSA satellite feed onto one of her side screens and monitored the London airport as she continued to skim the egg baby file. The plane was late, but finally it landed and the SAS, fully armed, swarmed inside.

Ten minutes crawled by. After fifteen minutes of total inactivity, a handful of SAS men left the plane with three men, doubtless the cockpit crew, given their uniforms. Lindsey sat up and leaned toward the screen. This didn’t at all fit with what she’d anticipated. Where was the girl? The SAS men walked out with the crew, went to the cars, got in, and drove off.

Something was wrong.

Chapter 6

L indsey continued to stare at the scene on her computer monitor. Clearly, Teal was not on the plane the SAS had just searched. Could Allison have gotten her information wrong?

Lindsey’s secure cell phone rang. “Did you just see that?” Allison asked without preamble.

“Teal is not on the plane, right?”

“I know absolutely that she boarded their private jet in Bogotá and the flight plan called for the trip to be nonstop. When I learn more, I’ll contact you.”

“I’ll be here. I’ll be checking my contacts who may have information about this kidnapping or about genetic engineering.”

“This changes everything. We thought we had her safe.” Allison’s voice held an edge of urgency.

Allison, who Lindsey had never known to be anything but amiable and polite, hung up without formalities, clearly, terribly worried. Lindsey didn’t just need information about who was involved and why, she now needed to find where Teal might be. Assuming Teal was still alive.

Well, put that thought right out of your mind, Lindsey Novak! You will operate on the assumption that Teal is alive.

She kept two separate files for her information contacts: legit and shady. She opened up the legit file on her hard drive and scanned names: media contacts, private investigators and professionals in a wide range of disciplines that mostly related to art, archeology or anthropology. But there was one contact in genetics. Beatrix Riegler in Geneva of World Care Watchdogs International. WCWI exposed illegal traffickers in medical or scientific areas the way Amnesty International exposed tyrants who imprisoned people unjustly.

Lindsey combed through the file. Beatrix had sources for information about the sale of expired drugs sold on the black market. She monitored sales of untested drugslike antiaging and cancer treatments. She dogged global traffickers of body organs for transplants and blocked sales to corporations or insurance companies of the medical files of private citizens. The latest scam Lindsey had discussed with Beatrix was the black market in stem cell lines stolen from legitimate laboratories. Unsuspecting buyers had no real way to know if the lines were contaminated.

The phrase human genomes grabbed Lindsey’s attention. WCWI monitored the ongoing DNA project in Maldovia, a massive database of human genomes second only to the original one set up in Iceland. Every citizen gave a sample of their DNA and answered an extensive questionnaire about their medical and psychological history. This information was matched to the surprisingly complete birth and death records kept in the country for nearly two hundred years. WCWI made sure that the data collected on the population wasn’t sold to anyone except licensed users/researchersmedical, genetic, or historicaland under strict conditions. If someone were seeking illegal information on genetics, WCWI might hear of it.

Lindsey checked the clockit was not too late to call. No one beyond her contacts must know what she was searching for, and even then, this kind of information wasn’t something to be discussed via easily compromised phones or e-mails. For this she’d have to make contact in person.

Using her landline, she dialed the number. Beatrix had a sweet voice, and she answered at once with a cheery, “Beatrix hier.” The strains of Brahms played in the background mixed with sounds of laughter.

Lindsey’s German was much worse than Beatrix’s English. In English Lindsey explained that she needed to meet with Beatrix tomorrow.

“This is rather sudden, Lindsey.”

“It’s urgent.”

Lindsey heard a long sigh. Beatrix owed Lindsey, but knew she was going to be asked for information. After a moment’s silent pause, Beatrix said, “I’m swamped at work. What have you in mind?”

“I can take an early flight and meet you in the WCWI lobby at twelve-thirty.”

“A bit later, please, I have a lunch meeting. One o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

Satisfied, Lindsey hung up. This was the source most likely to pay off. She faxed a message to the charter company for the Learjets her father’s business leased, telling them she’d need a 7:30 a.m. flight for the four-and-a-half-hour trip. Then she made a tuna sandwich and returned to the computer, eating as she pored over the legit files.

After forty minutes, she closed the files, discouraged. From a baggie in the freezer, she retrieved the key to a locked jewelry box in a bathroom drawer. In the box, under some fake jewelry and the bottom lining, lay the flash drive with the file of all her contacts that were not so legitimate. Of course, most of them did have some legitimate cover, but it was their contact with the darker world that put them on this list.

She inserted the flash drive into the computer and starting at the top, analyzed each entry. Although her eyelids grew heavy and her eyes burned, she didn’t skip anyone.

The annoying ring of her landline phone shocked her awake. She lurched upright, her hand knocking her empty cup onto the Oriental carpet.

What time is it? The last time she remembered looking at the clock it had been eleven-thirty. It was now one-thirty in the morning.

She snatched up the phone receiver. Allison was again at the other end. “I know it’s very early for you,” Allison said. “I apologize.”

“No problem, Allison.”

“We have new information. Do you know Samantha St. John?”

“Athena alum?”

“Yes. She works for the CIA. Sam’s been on this mess from the beginning. She accessed CIA satellite intel tracking the plane carrying Teal. The plane lost altitude and three people parachuted from it well before landing in Britain.”

Lindsey sucked in a sharp breath. She saw herself only a day ago terrified as she stood at the open door of the plane with Marko holding her. Her heart went out to Teal. The poor girl, young and frightened and forced to leap from a plane.

“Obviously,” Allison continued, “one of the three had to be Teal. They were likely picked up in the ocean south of Ireland. Authorities are searching, Lindsey, but you need to put this information into your calculations. I didn’t want to wait until morning.”

“I agree. I want to be in the loop at all times.”

They hung up, but Lindsey was too awake now to go back to sleep. She returned to her list of possible sources. Ten names. Ten chances to find Teal, each less promising than the one before it. Her references were geared for art, not human trafficking. Beatrix just had to come through.

She went to the bedroom closet. To each of her contacts, she presented different but appropriate personas. For Beatrix it would be tailored and professional. And it was cold in Geneva. She started sorting through her outfits.

With her strategy in place, she set the alarm for 5:45. She needed to be at Novak Sicurezza Internazionale by seven in the morning to explain to K-bar, who was always at work before anyone else, that she needed a couple of days off.

Novak Sicurezza Internazionale, or NSI, occupied the two top floors of a lovingly renovated four-story building four winding blocks from the Uffizi Gallery. Views from K-bar’s fourth-floor office were of the Ponte Vecchio, the river Arno, and the city’s red-tile roofline. Other NSI offices looked onto the Campanile di Giotto in the Piazza Duomo.

Her father allowed her to kiss his cheek. He smelled of expensive colognelike nutmegand was dressed, as always, in an impeccable Italian suit, this one a charcoal gray that complemented the white streaks in his dark-red hair. His eyes, like hers, were also gray. She only resembled her mother, Lindsey often thought, in personality: artistic, empathetic and enthusiastic, not the natural daredevil that K-bar was. Loretta Novak had been a textbook illustrator. She’d died in an auto accident seven years ago, when Lindsey was twenty-one. The shocking loss had made Lindsey’s relationship with her father even more complicated. And the emptiness still sometimes felt unbearable.

“So you are back safely and soundly from Naples,” he grumbled.

“And with the recovered Artemisia on its way by special courier to its rightful owners.”

K-bar dropped into the brown Italian leather swivel chair behind his desk and leaned back, making the leather creak. K-bar Novak was engraved on his gold nameplate. His employees might be surprised to know his name was Anton, but they all knew the story of how a young Special Forces commander with a few too many beers in his belly had chased a man out of a house of prostitution wielding his KA-BAR knife. Big-screen hero, her father. When she was young, she’d called him both “Daddy” and “K-bar,” but the latter had stuck at some point.

“So. To what do I owe the honor of your appearance this early on a Monday morning?” he asked.

“I need to take a couple of days off.”

“More art business? You know, I was counting on you to bring in the Berlin telecom account. They’ll need advice and staffing for all their operations in Guatemala and Honduras. I don’t have anyone as persuasive as you, Lindsey.”

“Damiano can handle it.”

Her father said nothing. She loved working for NSI and knew K-bar expected that one day she would take over the entire security business. But for now, he also accepted that she had another passion and never interfered when she asked for time off. She would let him think it was another art recovery deal. He had no idea she took on operations for Athena or served now and then as a courier for the U.S. government.

“Okay. But keep me informed. By the way, how did Savin work out?”

“Marko’s very

take-charge. But it all ended well. I actually went skydiving with him yesterday.”

K-bar’s eyebrows shot up. “Marko, huh? He’s a good man on assignment, Linds. I’ve never employed better. But skydiving with him? I never can figure why women can’t see when a man is just on the make.”

Lindsey took a deep breath to keep from blushing. “It’s not a problem. Really.”

“Easy to say. Marko is a typical Italian male. New woman every month. Then when it doesn’t work out for one reason or another, he’s off again. Women are attracted to Marko Savin like barflies to beer.”

She laughed but felt even luckier that she hadn’t gone to bed with Marko. On some level, she’d sensed what K-bar was saying. “I agree that a woman would have to be nuts to get involved with him. Don’t worry. I just considered it a chance to do something exciting that I’d never done before.”

“You liked the skydiving?” He gave her a challenging look. It was always a question, always a test for him.

“Fabulous,” she said, her voice firm.

“Sure you’d like it. Nothing after the AthenaAcademy would be too much. I’ve always been glad your mother and I sent you. It made you tough. You’ve always managed affairs of the heart just fine.”

“Right. I’m a no tears’ kind of woman.” She was skilled at walking away from anything sticky. Distancing herself. She was good at that.

He frowned and leaned forward, arms on the desk. “You sure this is just an art thing you’re doing, Linds?”

She laughed. “If I told you what it was about, I’d hafta kill ya.”

She stood, wanting to kiss him on the cheek again, but knowing the gesture would only make him uncomfortable, she left.

Chapter 7

L indsey resisted the urge to tell the cabdriver once more how urgently she needed to be on time for a meeting at the Place des Nations. Beatrix expected her in five minutes, but they were stuck in traffic on Geneva’s Pont du Mont Blanc. The cabbie couldn’t change that miserable fact.

At 8:00 a.m., a half hour later than planned, she’d hurried aboard the private jet in Florence. In Geneva, she spent another fifteen precious minutes connecting with a taxi. It was now 12:55. If she didn’t make it on time, Beatrix could use that as an excuse to avoid seeing her.

A young girl’s life shouldn’t depend on making transportation connections, Lindsey thought as the taxi burned fuel going nowhere fast.

The bridge spanned the southern tip of Lake Geneva where the lake flowed into the RhoneRiver. A thick layer of ice created by winds gusting off the lake covered benches on the quay on the north shore in white. The famous Jet d’Eau geyser was, of course, turned off for the winter. Everything seemed pewter-colored, the buildings, the lake, the sky, the peaks of the Savoy Alps beyond Geneva. Despite the warmth of the cab and her black Cossack-style coat and boots, Lindsey shivered. The gray, cold day mirrored her mood.

Her cell phone rang. Beatrix. Lindsey explained the traffic mess and added, “I’ll be no more than ten minutes late if I have to get out and run.”

“You still wouldn’t make it. But I was calling because I must cancel. My lunch appointment is lasting longer than anticipated.”

Lindsey clutched the telephone, her pulse accelerating. Remain calm. “Just tell me where you are, and I’ll meet you there afterward. I only need a few minutes, Beatrix.”

“Do you realize that I could be fired just for being seen with you, if your line of work were discovered?”

Beatrix was overreacting. Probably. “I’ll wait till your lunch meeting is over and”

“No, Lindsey, I’m sorry. It’s just impossible. I have to prepare for an”

“Beatrix, when you hear how important this is”

“Dear girl, I have all the high-priority crises I can handle, thank you very”

“R-JUV-8.”

The connection between them fell silent. Last year, Lindsey, in a dicey contact, had stumbled onto a shipment of an antiaging serum claiming to be chock-full of human growth hormone but being instead a mix of herbal derivatives and an illegal new, and very dangerous, stimulant. She’d involved Beatrix, who then received credit for the confiscation of six million dollars’worth of the product. Beatrix owed Lindsey a favor or three. Since Lindsey worked outside of legal channels, Beatrix was extremely nervous about dealing with Lindsey.

“Are you there, Beatrix?”

Beatrix sighed. She gave Lindsey an address in the Paquis district, one of the few interesting areas in this city, which was, for such an international population, pizzazz-challenged. Behind practical gray stone walls, powerful people met and conducted world affairs. World Council of Churches. World Intellectual Property Organization. Eurovision. All those banks. Virtually every major NGO, and, of course, the diplomats. Geneva was unofficially the world capital of bureaucracies. “We can meet there. No one I know eats there and I can return to work quickly.”

The menu outside indicated that the steamy restaurant, Bistro Eidelweiss, offered typical Swiss and French food. The tiny lobby was crowded. Lindsey immediately spotted Beatrix’s brown chignon and on her way to Beatrix’s table she passed hot fondues and soups, onion tarts, crepes with all kinds of fillings. Her stomach growled. All she’d eaten on the jet was a health bar topped off with coffee.

By the time an obviously overworked waiter signaled he’d soon be there to take Lindsey’s order, Beatrix had already listened to Lindsey’s story about the possibility of trafficking in genetically modified human embryos. She checked her BlackBerry, then shook her head.

“Whatever it is, it’s monstrous,” Beatrix said. “I’m sorry I avoided you. I’ll help. We’ll just have to work around your

fascinating connectionseven if it means I lose my job.” Her blue eyes sparkled with what looked like determination. “Kestonians are looking to develop human supersoldiers. Their new dictator, Vlados Zelasko, is a nut. The idea is outrageous and impossible. We log the movements and actions of Kestonians wherever they turn up. I can provide you with the names of all the labs we’re watching, but that’s all I have that could be relevant.”

Human supersoldiers. Extra strong. Extra fast. Superhuman eyesight and hearing. Human weapons. Exactly the kind of thing that would bring a huge black-market price. And maybe no longer an impossible idea at all. “That’s exactly what I’m after”

“Oh, my God!” Beatrix blurted out as she hid her face with her purse.

“What?” Lindsey said.

“The man that just came in, he works with me.”

“Shall I”

“Just leave, okay?”

Lindsey reached across the table and squeezed Beatrix’s arm. “Done. You take care. And thank you.”

No specific leads. No crepes. No fondue. She rose and made her way back to her coat and hat, her stomach demanding that she eat a mountain of pasta very soon.

Chapter 8

H is name was Iacapo Donato, but Lindsey called him Jake. Known publicly as a highly respectable antiquities dealer, his various and nefarious ties extended far beyond the world of thousand-year-old kraters, coins, or marble buststhings that were occasionally reasons for Lindsey to contact him about underground rumblings. Jake had also helped her father find the son of a billionaire Moroccan, kidnapped despite her father’s security team. Jake had learned of a shipment of illegals from Morocco into France. The smugglers of cheap labor also had the boy. NSI had successfully returned the boy to his family.

It was quite possible that Jake may have heard of something involving a kidnapping, maybe even specifically about the high-profile kidnapping of two American girls from Phoenix, Arizona. Checking AA.org, Lindsey saw that Shannon Connor, a former Athena Force student with no love for her alma mater, had also been on international broadcasts of BBC and CNN, continuing her negative spotlight on the AthenaAcademy.

When Lindsey had called Jake from the jet to make sure he’d be at his private club in Florence tonight, he’d invited her instead to his villa for the evening. “I’ll be showing off my latest acquisitionsand more,” he said in his affected British accent. “Wear that marvelous jade gown.”

So. Formal attire instead of cocktail. The dress was actually sage-green, but definitely the sexiest thing she’d ever owned. Stretch satin and nearly backless, its modest neckline set off a faux emerald necklace while the daring cut of the sides displayed more of her breasts than an unescorted woman in Italy should reveal. The floor-length sheath was slit only to midthigh level, but the back plunge and clinging fabric made underwear impossible.

Dress and heels. Nothing else, except necklace and earrings and her fluffy hunter-green mohair shawl.

Jake’s villa lay sixteen kilometers from Florence. She pushed her Alfa Spider above the speed limit through the village of Malmantile, which had grown around an old Tuscan fortification on the road to Pisa. The villa, perched on the side of a shallow canyon, had been added onto a centuries-old square tower. Five stories tall, its crenellated top had been roofed and glassed in. The four-story front section and the three-story wings featured romantic balconies and rows of narrow arches. The place was architecturally stunning and filled with pricey antiquesall watched over by Jake’s staff and all for sale.

Inside, she checked her shawl, ascended a broad staircase to the second floor, and worked her way through elegantly attired guests toward a buffet table without spotting Jake. He was probably in the gaming room in the back where high-stakes, illegal baccarat and roulette were played. Jake’s payoff from her for his efforts was always two things: five percent of her finder’s fee and that, every time she came to him soliciting information, she spend at least two hours in the back room schmoozing with his gamblers and looking her most alluring.

Before she could select any of the gorgeous morsels on the buffet, a man’s hand clapped her bare back and swept her from the table. Beppo, a glorified fence for stolen goods, whisked her onto a balcony into the shock of cold air and thrust her backward in a motion so smooth and sudden, she had no immediate defense. Smelling of stale tobacco, he leaned on top of her like a tango dancer bending over his partner, and the rail pressed painfully into her spine and kidneys.

Potted palms and heavy drapes prevented onlookers from inside the party witnessing what they’d assume were eager lovers if they did catch a glimpse. With one hand he clamped her throat, fingers digging in. She could barely breathe.

“No one will hear you scream over Iacapo’s pretentious chamber music,” he said.

She struggled, but with his other hand, he forced one of her arms behind her.

“Because of you,” he snarled, “I had Interpol breathing down my back for weeks, carabinieri and private detectives, too.” He pushed her head farther back as she thrashed. “Double-crossers get what they deserve.”

Her hair clip loosened and fell into the canyon belowwhere she just might fall if she didn’t do something. Her throat and back in agony, she still clutched her purse in her free hand. She tried to push him back. Failed. She screamed, though weakly, to distract him. With her thumb, she flicked the clasp open, hooked fingers around the small container, let the bag drop, flipped the release and sprayed him full in the face with superstrength mace/pepper foam.

He screamed Italian swearwords, or tried to, and dropped to his knees.

“I don’t think anyone can hear you over Iacapo’s pretentious chamber music,” she said as she picked up her purse. “And if guys leaned on you, Beppo, it wasn’t because of me. Pieces looted from the BaghdadMuseum are still too hot.” Through Beppo and extremely discreetly, Lindsey had helped a benefactor of the museum return a Persian golden lion to the curators.

Shivering, she left him writhing on the balcony, shut the double doors, locked them and closed the heavy damask ivory drapes.

Jake, delighted to see her, joined her and squired her into the gaming room. She complied, inwardly seething with impatience. This better pay off. Every minute she played hostess, Teal Arnett might be gasping a last breath.

“I like your hair flying loose that way,” Jake said. He was in his early fifties, pudgy and bearded, black hair shot through with gray. She stepped back a little. He said, “Did you know that musk from the male musk deer is worth three times more per ounce than gold on the black market? One of my many friends here”

“Jake, I hate to interrupt but I have two urgent situations.” She quickly explained, as if she were dealing with separate cases, a kidnapping of an American girl and any news of trafficking in human genetics, in any form.

“I have nothing for you.” He frowned. “Do you hear banging?”

“That will be Beppo. We had

a little disagreement. I locked him onto the downstairs balcony.”

Jake looked genuinely distressed. “Il figlio di putana! I’ll have the bastard thrown out, Lindsey.”

She put in her two hours as hostess, and when he finally returned to her as she was preparing to leave, he looked sad. “If I hear anything”

“Time is critical, Jake. Wake me up if necessary.”

Her secure cell phone rang as she opened the door to her apartment just before 1:00 a.m. Lindsey fetched it from her purse.

“Lindsey? It’s Allison.”

“Any news?” Lindsey felt suddenly breathless.

“I think so. Katie Rush’s friend, Stefan, the psychic. He’s receiving powerful mental impressions that he’s sure come from Teal.”

“Oh, thank God. She’s still alive and okay, then?”

“The communication is more in images, not words. We can’t be sure of much.”

Lindsey grabbed a pen and paper. “Okay, I’m ready.”

“He says he has an image of a city that looks old and European with drifts of snow on red-tile roofs, domes poking out of the snow, and spires. Lots of tall spires.”

Lindsey scribbledold, Europe, snow, spires. “That sounds like a hundred European cities this time of year.”

“No kidding. Sam cross-referenced satellite visuals of snow across Europe with architecture and cities of over a hundred thousand and came up with over 250 cities.”

Lindsey sighed. “Why didn’t Stefan send messages sooner?”

Allison sighed, as well. “I feel sorry for this young man. He admitted to, at one point, seeing only blackness around Teal. He secretly feared she’d died. Now he thinks she may have been drugged. Maybe they drug her off and on.”

“I have a few more leads, but all I’ve turned up is that the Kestonians are interested in creating an army of genetically enhanced soldiers.”

“Ye gods

Well, then the Kestonians would certainly be interested in any Lab 33 info that might be for sale.”

Lindsey ended the call. “Lots of tall spires.” God, she was tired. She couldn’t think. But that’s why we have computer searches.

She brought up the Web browser on her computer and entered Europe city spires and immediately found what she was struggling to remember. The first entry of hundreds of thousands of hits. “Golden city of spires.” “City of a hundred spires.” Prague.

Nothing was that easy. She knew better than to jump to the conclusion that she’d found the answer, but it was nice to have a name at the top of the list. Fatigue took possession of her body. She stared blankly, as if her mind was like the static of “snow” on a TV screen. She had to eat something.

She stumbled into her bedroom instead and took her shoes and gown off. Naked, she threw the covers back and focused on setting her alarm. Too tired to even wiggle into a night-shirt, she crashed onto her pillow.

To her amazement, she thought of Marko, picturing his arms around her, imagining the warmth of lying together.

No

No.

Chapter 9

S he woke after six hours, feeling desperate. In the shower, Lindsey remembered she’d had a disturbing nightmare of parachuting and landing in a cold, black sea. Like Teal must have done. The sea

Of course!

Someone she’d only worked with indirectly was in her files. She threw on sweats, made peanut butter and jelly on toast and opened her file on a man who specialized in sea traffic in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlanticincluding modern-day piracy and human smuggling. He lived in Pisa but choppered daily to the port of Livorno for his business. Anything coming in through a port, especially in cargo containers, came to his attention sooner or later. He paid hundreds of miscellaneous crew members, private and military. He knew the strictest ports in Europe, as well as the leakiest. She e-mailed him asking for any knowledge of a rescue at sea in the Atlantic south of Ireland, along with where the ship may have docked and any subsequent destination, and left her cell phone number, urgently requesting a call.

Maybe finding Teal would require putting bits and pieces together instead of making one right connection. Her next contact, Cesare Fumagalli, required another shift in persona. He’d originally met her at one of his wild parties where she’d cornered a drugged-out thief from a tapestry buyback gone south. She’d caught the thief stealing one of Cesare’s heirloom pinkie rings worth several thousand dollarswhich proved the power of drugs, since no one sober would consider pulling such a stunt. Word was, the creep was never seen again. Ever. LakeComo was the deepest lake in Italy.

Cesare was the son of a bona fide Mafia donwhom he had, he bragged, badly disappointed. He wanted people to think he was legit but didn’t even bother with a front to account for his lavish spending and fabulous villa on LakeComo. Still, Cesare had plenty of money and nobody messed with him. And he had amazing black-market contacts, buying and selling South African Krugerrands and diamonds, pharmaceuticals, legal and otherwise, religious icons, weapons, “black gold,” which was not oil but caviar, regular gold and anything else of value.

He thought of Lindsey as hot and wild. It was cold up there now in the lake district, and she could wear her Cossack coat and boots, but after that, she’d look nothing like she had in Geneva. She pulled on purple tights. Then the spandex micromini. Sheer teal knit topno bra. Gray silk shirt unbuttoned. Shabby-chic iridescent black wool scarf. Hair gelled, twisted up and clipped, teased and sprayed. Makeup. Layers of it around the eyes.

Ready.

With desperation snapping at her heels, she caught a train to Milan and another to Como, where she rented an Alfa Romeo and drove to the grand hotel in Bellagio for lunch at one, a three-hour trip, one-way.

Cesare was handsome and amusing, midthirties, very Latin with dark eyes and lashes any woman might covet. Their table overlooked the lake, everything in view lightly dusted with snow. Her Eurotrash persona attracted stares from the hotel’s sedate clientele. Cesare wouldn’t mind. He loved flaunting his outrageous lifestyle.

“You know,” he said after he’d ordered, “I always thought my ancestors were cooks who smoked chickens.”

“Oh? Let’s see, fuma is smoke and galli, yeah, chicken. So what were they really?”

“I just learned that they smoked henhouses to keep chickens from squawking when they were being stolen. So, chicken thieves!”

They both laughed.

“Not cooks but crooks,” she joked.

He stopped laughing.

My God, Lindsey, watch it. This Mafioso can make people who tell jokes at his expense disappear.

They chitchatted. He seemed interested in what she knew about musk from male musk deer and about Dacian coins. While eating eggplant parmesan, she spoke to him of the kidnapping. Almost as an afterthought she also explained she had another client interested in anything about genetic tampering with humans. Of all the things Cesare would be least likely to know about it was genetic engineering.

He held his hand out, indicating she should put her hand in his. She did. A passing busboy gawked and dropped a dish off his tray. Ignoring the boy completely, Cesare pulled her hand up to his lips and kissed slowly, never taking his eyes off hers.

Still holding her hand, he said, “You found my ring, and I retrieved your tapestry. Mutual reciprocity is a wonderful thing.” His gaze traveled to her breasts and then back to her eyes. “If I find information on this matter for you, the debt will again pass to you.” He kissed her hand again. “And I’m sure we’ll think of something mutually gratifying.”

She drew a deep breath, and then laughed, as though thinking his comment was intended to be one of his fake Mafia jokes. “Right. I’d owe you one.”

He smiled slightly, staring at her as if he knew something she didn’t. Then from the inside pocket of his soft black leather jacket he pulled out something she never expected a playboy like Cesare to even know about, let alone owna BlackBerry. “Let’s check out the latest on the black-market eBay.”

He clicked several times, frowned, began another series of clicks and smiled. “What do you think of this? Private auction. Anyone interested in genetic engineering of humans for medical or other uses would be interested in this sale item. Seven-figure bids only. Prospective buyers will be screened. Personal contact required.’” Another smile, one of victory. “It is to be in two days in Prague and there is a Prague contact number.”

Oh, my God! Prague!

“This source is dated. It’s been circulating for nearly four weeks. But it’s big-time black market stuff.”

Not surprising. Whoever had planned the kidnapping would have wanted to line up potential buyers. She stood, giving him a warm smile but feeling more than a bit displeased. Lots of competition would already have had this information for four weeks.

“You owe me, Lindsey.”

Using her cell phone on the return train trips, Lindsey made flight reservations to Prague for the next morning. A call came in from her shipping contact in Lovorno, saying he’d traced an arrival in a charter ship under circumstances like those she’d described into the French port of St. Nazaire on the Bay of Biscay near Nantes, but he had no further information. But it didn’t matter. No more contacts needed. Cesare had come through.

She punched another number and was connected to her dad’s voice mail. “K-bar, it’s me. Sorry I missed you. I’m leaving for Prague on a ten o’clock flight out of Rome in the morning. Czech Airlines. It’s another

this art deal is more complex than I’d thought. Back in two or three days. Kisses. Bye.”

Finally a call to Christine at the Academy.

“You did it! Excellent work, Lindsey,” she said after listening to Lindsey’s news. “Stefan has been bombarded again with images and feelings from Teal. She’s in a place Stefan describes as a dungeon, and she’s anxious, freaked out but not terrified. They must still be taking relatively good care of her. He senses her powerful loathing for a slender man with slicked-down hair. Mediterranean-looking.”

“I’ll need cover.” She gave Christine her flight number and departure time.

“I’ll put people on it immediately. You’ll have a packet waiting at the Florence airport tomorrow morning. What we can’t have ready for you by then will be waiting at the CIA safe house in Prague. I’m virtually certain I have the pull needed to arrange for the safe house to be your base. If not, I’ll arrange something else.”

“We’re going to get Teal back,” Lindsey said.

“Be careful, Lindsey. We don’t want to lose you, too. The sense here is that something far more sinister than a kidnapping seems to be going on, we just don’t know what.”

Chapter 10

“I don’t understand,” Marko said to K-bar. K-bar sat behind that massive, virtually bare walnut desk playing with a silver letter opener that always reminded Marko of a dagger. “What is it you want me to do?”

“I think Lindsey may be into something more dangerous than she fully understands. I want you to follow her. She’s not to know it, but I want you to keep on her tail. And should it become necessary, protect her.”

Marko could not suppress a smile. The memory of Lindsey’s body trembling against his rose in his mind, and he imagined the touch and taste of her lips and mouth. He also remembered that she’d tossed him out after setting him on fire. The woman was danger personified. “Mr. Novak, with all due respect, I’ve seen Lindsey in action. That is one woman who can take care of herself.”

K-bar laughed. He tossed the letter opener onto the desk. “Actually, you don’t know the half of it. My daughter had training at a very special high school. A kind of military, survival, and spy academy for women. I sent her there so that she’d be able to handle herself.”

“Then”

K-bar held up a restraining hand. “You know about her art retrieval enterprises. She’s told me she is taking off for Prague on another one, but I don’t believe her. I can’t explain why this one feels different. Maybe because she’s never gone as far afield before. But there’s also the fact that I have, for some time, suspected that she’s involved with a government agency. Something she hasn’t told me about. Officially can’t.”

“You think she’s been spying?”

“Maybe. Many AthenaAcademy graduates go into government service. Often quite openly. Analysts for the NSA or CIA or FBI, for example. But I know some of them must be recruited for secret service. I’m worried that this is true for Lindsey.”

“Still, you’ve said she’s capable and I’ve seen it myself.”

“Marko, this isn’t a request. You work for me. This is your assignment. You follow her. To Prague or to hell if necessary. I want to know what she is doing. And most of all, I want to know someone I trust has her back. What I understandand I doubt that Lindsey doesis that these agencies see their people as soldiers, unfortunately but necessarily disposable. My daughter is not disposable.”

They lapsed into silence, K-bar’s gaze boring right into Marko’s skull. Sweat trickled at his neck. Following Lindsey Novak would be about the last thing in the world he’d want to do. If anything happened to her, Marko would be skewered and barbecued over the flame of K-bar’s anger. And then there was the fact that being around Lindsey sent Marko’s hormones into overdrive.

K-bar broke the silence. “Aren’t you going to ask me when and where?”

Early the next morning, Wednesday, as he settled into his coach-class seat on the commuter plane that would take him and Lindsey into Rome, Marko reminded himself again of his obligation to K-bar. The man had rescued him from the pit of the French Foreign Legion and given him the best job he’d ever had or ever dreamed of. Action. Adventure. Women. Interesting places. He loved working for NSI. He would do his damnedest to protect K-bar’s daughter.

And he wouldn’t actually have to be with Lindsey, just shadow her. Surely he could manage that. Couldn’t he?

From Rome they would fly direct on Czech Airlines into Prague. K-bar had used his resources to find her schedule and had tickets waiting in Florence. Marko wore sunglasses, a heavy black winter overcoat and a black, shearling lamb Russian Ambassador’s winter hat; Prague was going to be colder than Mont Blanc in a blizzard. About the only part of him not covered were his cheeks. Marko had boarded the plane after she had, and she never even looked up when he walked past.

He still wore the sunglasses and hat, although he had shed the coat. He’d chosen plain black wool slacks, black shoes and a brown, heavy knit sweater layered over a black shirt. He would pretty much blend into any Prague crowd. He leaned into the aisle and looked forward into business class. Lindsey was also sitting in an aisle seat. God, she looked gorgeous. A pale-blue turtleneck sweater set off her long, dark-red hair. In Naples he’d tagged her as tough. For skydiving she’d seemed sporty. This was an entirely different looksoft, feminine.

Yes, he wanted something better out of life. But it couldn’t be with Lindsey Novak. She was a perfectionist, methodical, punctual. His thing was spontaneity. He’d grown up by his wits, alla giornata, hand to mouth, among the criminal elements along the canals of Venice. She was high-class with a first-rate education. They couldn’t be more unsuited for anything permanent. He was far too quick to imagine himself struck by il colpo di fulmine, the thunderbolt of love. He could maybe have a better future life, but not with K-bar’s daughter.

He’d brought a new Dan Brown novel. He pulled it from the magazine pocket in front of him, opened it, and forced his eyes to the first page of text.

Chapter 11

L indsey spent the flight to Prague prepping for her identity as a Griffin Pharmaceuticals representative with the information provided just before the flight out of Rome by someone she presumed was CIA. Boring stuff but critical to staying alive.

She had the creepy feeling of being watched, but couldn’t tell who her watcher might be. She’d glimpsed a man in the kind of black lamb hat seen all over Prague who made her nervous, but he seemed oblivious of her presence. Still, those sunglasses

Had Cesare tipped off someone? Had her contact sent someone to follow her?

Inside the RuzyneInternationalAirport, the new portion of the North Terminal was ultramodern, shining with porcelain and marble tile. Shafts of cold winter sunlight brightened huge windows. After a casual glance, directly and in her cosmetic mirror, to make sure no one watched her, she found phones and covered her free ear to block out human babble as she dialed the number provided in the notice on Cesare’s BlackBerry.

“Speak,” a male voice said in English. Given that news of the impending sale had been in English, she wasn’t surprised. Potential buyers from many countries would be involved, and the language they would all be most likely to share was English.

“My name is Sylvia Platt. I am interested in the property for sale.”

“What is your business and what is your country?” The man’s voice was cultivated, his accent American.

“I represent a pharmaceutical company. If we meet, I’ll provide more details. I’m an American, but my company is headquartered in Milan.”

“A personal meeting is required. Where are you staying?”

“I have a reservation at the Grand Hotel Wenceslas, but I have some business before I go there.” Her watch said ten minutes after eleven local time. “I should be able to check in by one o’clock and be available afterward.”

“I shall meet you in the bar at fourteen-thirty. How will I recognize you?”

“Dark-red hair and wearing a black suit with a green stone pendant at the neck.”

They broke off, and she strode out of the terminal into a stiff, cold February wind. Gray wisps of exhaled air curled up from the cold lips of people making ground connections. Fresh snow blanketed the distant roofs and fields. She gave a taxi driver the address of the CIA safe house, located in the OldTown section, the Stare Mesto. Christine clearly had come through with the CIA.

And then, magic. The city had escaped the ravages of the SecondWorldWar and she’d expected something beautiful, but the dazzling sight of this jewel of a medieval city draped in winter white, set among pincushion hills, studded with the needle-pointed church spires, exceeded all of her expectations.

The massive gray PragueCastle and its towers surrounded the famous St. Vitus Cathedral, and together they dominated the city. Its four main spires reminded Lindsey of the sand castles of her childhood, carefully dripped into tall delicate points. What powerful kings and bishops must have ruled from here during the Middle Ages, Lindsey mused. One day, she would return to Prague for pleasure.

The taxi crossed a bridge over the VltavaRiver, which was frozen over, into OldTown. Built over hundreds of years of occupation, its architecture consisted of layers and facades, combining structures and styles.

As they swept through Old Town Square

, across the CharlesBridge from the PragueCastle, the cabbie, clearly pleased to practice his English, said, “Buildings are Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque. You come back to see the famous clock. Astronomical. Every hour Twelve Apostles comes out.”

He let her out in front of a tobacco shop on one of the narrow, cobbled streets radiating out from the square. Once inside, surrounded by the pungent smell of raw tobacco, which she actually loved and which reminded her of K-bar, she gave the password to the vendor. He directed her to a door at the rear of the shop.

A man reading a comic book asked for ID, then directed her into an elevator that took her down. She stepped out into familiar surroundings of desks, computers, phones and maps. “Welcome,” said the thin, gray-haired man who greeted her. “My name is Bendrich. Your things are waiting.”

“How did they build an underground complex like this without attracting a lot of attention in this quaint old part of the city?” Lindsey asked.

“Very astute question,” Bendrich said, smiling for the first time. “The ground level used to be much lower when the original city was built over six hundred years ago. The VltavaRiver banks had no walls, and flooding over four hundred years left new soil. With all the invasions, looting and sacking, people just built on top of what was already there. Now everybody in Stare Mesto has Romanesque ruins in their cellars, and those original foundations had cellars, too. This building was bought because it went down twenty feet.”

Lindsey found this both charming and unsettling, like building on top of a graveyard.

He handed her another packet that she presumed would have the appropriate passport and other papers for Sylvia Platt, Assistant Director of Marketing of Griffin Pharmaceuticals. “Currency?” she asked.

“You’ll find it in the packet.”

Only one other man and a young girl were present. Both had turned and smiled as she came in. They were now back to their work.

“Will you need a weapon?”

“No.”

“I have been told to give you every assistance I can. I regret to say that, as you can see, we are a very small operation.”

She filed the information away. Since her mission was information gathering, their short staffing shouldn’t be a problem, but you never knew how an op might go.

Bendrich gave her a work area, and she combed through the information in the new packet. It turned out that SamSamantha St. John, a fellow Athena alumhad been responsible for assembling it, and Lindsey was directed to contact Sam on her secure phone for any needed assistance. Lindsey needed more time to do homework before the meeting, but she needed to hurry if she didn’t want to keep the man waiting. She had everything she could anticipate needing. Sam had done an excellent job. She thanked Bendrich, waved goodbye to the two others, and returned to the store level.

The Grand Hotel Wenceslas sat on a boulevard in the shopping and business heart of Prague, Wenceslas Square

. The taxi driver pointed out the massive statue of a mounted Czech prince, St. Wenceslas. The bronze prince rode through the years, carrying his banner in the shadow of the grand Neo-RenaissanceNationalMuseum.

Her suite, a sitting room and bedroom, overlooked the street with a broad promenade down its center. She glanced out a window. Along the promenade, planters now covered in snow would, she imagined, come alive with blossoms in spring and summer. Warmly bundled shoppers and business-people hurried past, hunched against the biting chill of the wind. A sinking feeling settled in her gut. Lindsey was ensconced in luxury. Where was Teal? She had to be terrified. Why had the foolish girl chosen to stay with her captors? Would I, at her age, have been so brave? Or foolhardy?

Lindsey touched up her makeup for a colder look and smoothed her hair into a no-nonsense twist as she thought about the real nature of this mission. Now that genes could be easily manipulatedapparently snipped and pasted together at willthere was probably nothing that could stop the urge to tinker with humans. Bacteria could be made that secreted human insulin. Someone had created tobacco plants that glowed in the dark, able to synthesize an enzyme that nature produced only in fireflies. Genetically manipulated pigs had meat with more fish oil than pig oilsomething presumed to be healthier for the human diet. Why not zap a little gene into a woman’s egg to make sure her son grew tall enough to be a pro basketball player? Or fast, like Teal was said to be? Or even able to read minds?

How could a man of science have no moral qualms about where he might be taking the human race?

She looked at herself in the mirror, armed with her appearance of cold, sophisticated competence, ready for battle.

Chapter 12

M arko slung his overnighter onto a queen-size bed in the Grand Hotel Wenceslas in a room on the same floor as Lindsey’s. Whatever she was doing, it felt like a sting. He’d followed her to a tobacco shop, into which she’d disappeared for over an hour. The place clearly could not be just a tobacco shop. Now she’d registered at this expensive hotel.

Marko had bribed the bellman who’d taken her bag and knew she’d taken a suite on the top floor, room 602. She’d tipped extremely generously. Conclusion: The sting involved looking plush with money.

He stepped to the phone and punched the number for the registration desk. “I’m joining my friend here in the bar. Lindsey Novak. Could you ring her number please?”

“Certainly, sir.” A pause followed, then “I’m sorry. We have no one registered by that name.”

“Thank you.” More confirmation that Lindsey wasn’t acting as Lindsey.

Leaving his bag, he returned to the lobby. At the airport he’d bought a copy of the London Times. Now he found an unobtrusive spot where he could watch the bank of elevators. He removed his outer coat, but still wearing his hat and sunglasses, he settled in to wait.

At 2:20 he asked a bellman for coffee. A waitress appeared promptly; the coffee was strong and excellent.

At 2:28 a stunningly transformed Lindsey stepped out of an elevator and strode directly to the bar. Instead of the comfortable black slacks and soft blue sweater she’d worn on the plane, she wore a classy black suit, its skirt showing long, slender and impressively firm legs.

She’d pulled her hair severely away from her face, the effect bringing out her full lips, large gray eyes and high cheekbones. That artsy green stone at her neck and especially the bright red lipstick gave her a very you-don’t-want-to-mess-with-me image. The words that came to his mind were rich, cold and bad.

He folded his paper, donned the heavy coat and followed her, hanging well back. Inside the bar she hesitated, presumably letting her eyes adjust to the dimmer light, then picked a booth near the back. He waited a moment, stepped inside, and slid onto a stool at the circular bar.

“Stoli, on ice,” he said to the somber bartender.

A waiter had just delivered Lindsey her drink when a man still wearing his heavy winter topcoat joined her. Forty-fiveish, brown hair, five-ten or-eleven, goatee. Lindsey gestured for him to sit. He shrugged out of his coat and then slid into the booth opposite her.

Marko had expected to follow her out of the hotel, but now he had a chance to find out what name she was using. That could be useful. He had to risk that she and the man would talk for at least ten minutes, possibly fifteen.

The man also ordered a drink. Excellent. Presumably he intended to take sufficient time to drink it. Marko stood and signaled the bartender. “I’ll be back,” he said, indicating with an open palm that the bartender wasn’t to remove the drink.

The elevator, old and slow, returned him to the sixth floor. Using the phone in his room, he reached housekeeping. “We need two more towels in room 602, right away.”

“I’ll take care of it immediately,” said the woman on the other end of the line.

“Immediately” turned out to be a wait of eight minutes. He picked an alcove from which he could watch the hallway leading to Lindsey’s door, and he passed each second, praying that Lindsey was still in the bar. Finally the maid appeared with two towels draped over her arm.

He followed her down the hall, leaving enough time for her to knock, knock again, and then enter the room just before he arrived at the door. As she crossed a sitting room and entered the bathroom, he sped inside, scanning for any papers on the desk that might have Lindsey’s name on themnothing.

He crossed the sitting room and went into the bedroom, closing the door halfway. He waited quietly until the maid reappeared and left. It took only moments to check the luggage tags. The name on her bag was Sylvia Platt.

Back at the bar in just under twelve minutes, he sipped his drink as his heart rate dropped to normal. Lindsey was still talking to Mr. Goatee.

When her contact had introduced himself, he said she could call him James. Lindsey recognized him at once as the man in the photos of Teal getting on the plane in Colombia. James was, in fact, the infamous Jeremy Loschetter, the scientist who had worked at Lab 33 and escaped, apparently taking with him an undetermined number of Lab 33 files or copies thereof. She’d taken a nice long drink of her white wine to give her a chance to hide her excitement.

For ten minutes now she had answered extremely pointless questions about her work at Griffin, put to her as though they were somehow profoundly significant: How long had she worked there? Did she like the company? Did she like her boss? What was her boss’s name? How long had she lived in Milan? Had she been to Prague before?

Without being obvious, she checked her watch. Ten minutes of this drivel was long enough. “I’m sure your time is as valuable as mine. I’m here to learn more about a property you have for sale. Our company, of course, not only produces drugs, we produce a variety of chemical agents for the medical profession. We are specifically interested in cutting-edge work on fertility treatments and genetic modification of embryos. Particularly, as your information stated, genetic modifications of human embryos.”

Loschetter gave her a cold stare. Ice-blue eyes gave his look an added chill. She loathed the vibes coming off him. His verbosity reeked of arrogance, and she knew he had been a collaborator in the sickening plan to steal and modify Rainy’s eggs.

“I must, of course, check out your credentials, Ms. Platt. I will contact you tomorrow to let you know more details. There will be a demonstration of the sale items tomorrow evening. Attendance is required. You will be picked up.”

“Fine.” She wanted to ask specifically what he meant by sale items, but sensed the question might make him suspicious. If he wanted her to know, he would have told her.

Was Teal one of the sale items? Loschetter, with his cold blue eyes and condescending talk, felt utterly creepy, even if she hadn’t known his slimy history. Teal shouldn’t be in the clutches of such a man

no one should.

“There is something else,” he continued. “Something I will explain when I contact you later.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. Not to the point of whispering or actually sharing a secret, but a slight gesture that signaled that he considered the information special. Again she felt a rush of loathing for him. “Be prepared to make a rather unusual arrangement for the demonstration.”

Chapter 13

O n the edge of panic after meeting with the Platt woman, if that was her name, Jeremy Loschetter returned to his Opel sedan where Pietro waited, leaning against the hood and smoking a disgustingly sweet-smelling French cigarette. The urge to dismiss the slick-haired Italian crook from his service struck Jeremy again, but Pietro was useful and far too knowledgeable now to be dismissed. The only way Jeremy would allow Pietro to leave his service was via the grave.

Furious and frustrated, he recalled the day a year ago when Pietro entered his life. Slender and an inch shorter than Jeremy’s five foot ten, Pietro confronted Jeremy about his illegal sales of stolen crucifixes and candlesticks from medieval artisans. Jeremy’s legitimate research was, unfortunately, always starved for money, thus his need to stoop to black-market dealings. And his vulnerability to Pietro.

Pietro had refused to divulge how he had come by the information he’d used to blackmail Jeremy. For Pietro’s silence he demanded a cut on the sales. Their arrangement had grown over time. At first Pietro extended their dealings to include triptychs and occasional small paintings, but now he was in on the kidnapping and knew the reason for it. Pietro had even offered to line up the men required, claiming they were absolutely trustworthy and would do whatever was necessary.

Jeremy had asked Pietro if he was up to something that might get physical, maybe involve some killing. He’d been stunned when Pietro said, “Whatever needs doing, I’m the man.” He’d said it totally without expression. Jeremy considered himself a scientist, forced by circumstances to do some unfortunate things. He was, of course, not a brute. Jeremy had, for the first time, felt a bit afraid of Pietro.

Jeremy opened the door to the passenger side and took a seat. “Take me to the laboratory.”

Taking what Jeremy felt was a glacially slow time putting out his cigaretteslow enough to be insolentPietro finally climbed in and started the motor. The drive to the Loschetter Laboratory would take no more than twenty minutes, traffic still being relatively light.

After a meeting with his development team for the reproductive technologies he’d dubbed Fertilizen, which should take no more than thirty minutes, Jeremy would taxi to meet the last representative for his potential buyers, a man from Hong Kong. After that, he could return, by taxi, to the chateau, an expensive but necessary cost.

Jeremy considered again his nervous reaction to Sylvia Platt. Beautiful. Lusciously so. But cold. What was it about her confident speech or demeanor that had set off alarm bells? He’d probed her, asked her questions ostensibly about her work, but he didn’t buy it.

“I have a bad feeling about this Platt woman.”

Pietro waited, judiciously letting Jeremy further collect his thoughts.

“She’s about the same age as the agent in Colombia, that Katie Rush, who very nearly ruined this whole operation. And confident. Tough. Rush is an AthenaAcademy graduate. This woman gives me the same impression.”

Pietro cast him a surprised look. “How can that be?”

“I don’t know. But I have a gut feeling.”

Jeremy felt himself sweating. It wasn’t that the car was overheated. It was the goddamn woman, Platt. And A. In truth, A was really running this operation, and if Jeremy blew it, he had no doubt that A would make him pay dearly. Perhaps even have him killed.

When the first girl got away, someone had tried to kill him. He suspected A. Who else could know about his role in the kidnapping?

In the end, A had arranged for Colombians to do the job. Jeremy hadn’t needed Pietro. The kidnapping of the girls produced from Lab 33 had, in fact, been the sole idea of the mysterious A. Even the Colombian, Tulio, had admitted to Jeremy that A had blackmailed him into doing the kidnapping, and he swore he didn’t know who his blackmailer was, only that A had proven to have enough on Tulio’s drug operation to shut him down cold.

Since A was blackmailing Jeremyable to turn him in to the American authorities at any time as the sole possessor of papers and data he’d taken with him about Lab 33’s genetic enhancement techniquesJeremy had no choice but to execute A’s demand. Moreover, he’d repeatedly been given extremely knowledgeable assistance by A during the planning of the girls’ capture. His blackmailer with the spidery handwriting had sources of information that, on occasion, had left Jeremy dazzled.

But A didn’t know everything, and when Fertilizen finally paid off and went into production, Jeremy would at last become independently wealthy. Maybe he could find a way, then, to buy himself away from the bastard with the spidery script. Until then, however, there was a need to protect himself and find research money in this black-market backwater of the research world.

It was riskyeven frightening sometimesto think of double-dealing A, but it was necessary. Hadn’t A tried to kill him? He was fully justified cutting a slice off the bacon here and there. These sales would bring in fabulous sums.

“What if Platt isn’t from Athena?” Pietro asked. “She claimed to be from a pharmaceutical company. Pharmaceutical companies have big money.”

Pietro was obviously concerned about any potential loss of profit. And it was possible, just possible, that Jeremy might be overreacting.

They turned into the street housing the laboratory. Pietro braked, waiting until a horse-drawn cart, some hick from the sticks, moved out of the way. When they could move again, Pietro asked, “So what do you want me to do?”

“I can’t afford to take risks. I want her removed from the picture.”

“Permanently?”

“Yes. As soon as you can. I want it done before I go to sleep tonight. Make it look like a robbery gone bad.”

They stopped at the front of the laboratory, a fully renovated eighteenth-century building with a restored original facade. Pietro gave him that emotionless, cold stare. “Did you get a bug on her?”

“Yes.”

“Then consider it done.”

It was a shame, Jeremy thought. Sylvia Platt was intelligent and beautiful. He would rather make a mistress of such a woman, but if she was from Athena, or even from some official government or law enforcement agency, she had to be eliminatedand swiftly.

He stepped out of the car into welcome cool air but leaned back down, holding the door open. “Tomorrow is critical. Will the Arnett girl be

cooperative?”

“Don’t worry. By tomorrow night the little telepath will be dying to cooperate.” Apparently amused by his lame pun, Pietro offered a stiff smile that failed to reach his cold eyes.

In time I will eliminate Pietro.

Chapter 14

W hen Lindsey and her goateed contact left the hotel’s lounge and headed into the lobby, Marko laid cash on the bar to cover his drink, grabbed his coat and followed them. Without speaking again to the man, Lindsey took the elevator.

Marko followed Goatee outside and watched him stop twenty yards away where another man, slightly shorter and smoking, leaned against a car. By pretending to look into a display window, Marko could watch them in the glass reflection.

The smoker, he thought, had a familiar look. Growing up in la malavita di Venice among a family of thieves, Marko had encountered more than a few really bad types, even a man his father assured him was a contract killer. The FFL had been home to other rough men. The smoker gave off that same aura. Mean.

As they drove off, Marko entered the license plate number into his cell phone’s data bank. The smell of something meaty turned his head and his stomach growled. Across the street from the hotel, on the promenade, a vendor was peddling wurst. Marko sent the license number to K-bar with a message explaining that Lindsey had met this man. Marko would send more information later.

Excited to be able to tell Sam that she’d actually met Jeremy Loschetter, Lindsey hurried to her room. One of the big plusses of staying in a five-star hotel pretty much anywhere in the world was that they provided WiFi access to the Internet. Lindsey accessed AA.gov. Before calling Sam, she wanted a visual image of her contact and the site provided graduation photos of all the Athena girls.

While she waited for the site to load, she checked her purse and smiled when she discovered a tiny slit in the lining through which Jeremy had slipped a slim transmitter. Fortunately, the device didn’t include a microphone; she wouldn’t have to guard her every spoken word.

The face of a younger Samantha St. John appeared on Lindsey’s laptop screen. At once she placed Sam. Lindsey had met and talked briefly with her at the AthenaAcademy science building dedication. No question but that Sam had a beautiful face in a Slavic mold. Strong cheekbones and large, ice-blue eyes were framed by shoulder-length white-blond hair. She had worn just a touch of pink lipstick for the photo.

Lindsey also checked Sam out on the AA.gov section that profiled Athena graduates. She was a certified genius and computer whiz, a master of languages and a CIA linguist.

She dialed Sam’s line and when they connected Lindsey said, “I have my papers. I’ve made contact, and Jeremy Loschetter came in person. This is absolutely Lab 33 related and he’s at the heart of whatever is going down.”

“That’s huge progress. I’ll pass everything to Christine. Allison is also keeping tabs as best she can at the NSA. She has pretty highly placed friends there.”

Lindsey described their meeting and told Sam about the demonstration of the sale items that would take place tomorrow. “I gave him the chance to bug me, and he did. I spilled my drink, went to get a napkin and left my purse.”

“Perfect.”

“My guess is that he’s bugging the representatives of every potential buyer. He’s going to want to know where I go, and I’m sure he’ll be checking out everything I told him about Griffin Pharmaceutical.”

“Don’t fret. We have you totally covered at the pharmaceutical, your passport

everything.”

“I plan to kill time waiting the way any woman who has a fondness for art would do in Prague. And I need to get out of this room, make myself available to them.”

“I checked with Bendrich at the safe house. He says he can’t spare anyone to back you up. So you’re pretty much on your own.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Please be extra careful, Lindsey.”

Marko watched the hotel entrance. He’d taken his time consuming the hot spicy wurst on a stick. Delizioso. The lobby would be warm, but he’d already spent a lot of time there. It might arouse suspicion. On the other hand, he was damn cold. He’d been outside for fifteen minutes, stomping his feet to keep them from freezing. The sky was dark gray. Maybe it would snow. If she didn’t come out soon, he’d have to go back inside.

After breaking off with Sam, Lindsey checked her e-mail, looking for anything from delphi@oracle.org. For three years Lindsey had been an Oracle agent, recruited by a mysterious person she knew only as Delphi. She had been contacted, she was told, because of the skills she had honed at Athena and because of her access to the black market. Her assignments would come only from Delphi. She would report only to Delphi. She would never know the identity of any other Oracle agent.

Every assignment so far had been as a courier. Today, there was no message.

She then brought up her own personal Web site, www.adiana.net. Here she had created several secure pages of information she found useful when traveling: great restaurants where she’d eaten or where she’d like to eat and similar lists for things like hotels, art museums and art dealers.

After taking down three addressesone of the art dealers was apparently located right here on Wenceslas Plazashe changed back into her slacks, sweater and warm boots, grabbed her coat, gloves, purse and woolen hat and headed out for some fun.

She spent forty minutes in the gallery shop of Ctirad Hruza. He carried several pieces by Nikola Savic, whose colorful acrylicsalways an explosion of shapes and movementLindsey admired. Lindsey’s business dealt mostly with old art, but she painted modern and felt most joyful when losing herself in great modern works, Jackson Pollock and Georgia O’Keeffe being her favorites.

A taxi spirited her across the river to Malá Strana, or Little Town, a beautiful baroque sector where the gallery of Vavrinec Nejezchleb was located, not far from the famous CharlesBridge. Malá Strana nestled around the base of PragueCastle. What had once been homes of burghers had been converted into quaint shops, restaurants and pubs.

For a moment, before she stepped into the shop, Lindsey felt that sixth-sense itch of being followed. She whirled around. No more than a handful of people walked the snow-covered street. A figure disappeared into a shop. Could have been following her. Maybe not.

For half an hour Vavrinec Nejezchleb delighted in showing her his wares, including several of Jiri Borsky’s strong figurative works, like Picassos but with a gentler spirit. At one point the tinkle of a bell over the door preceded a slender man with slicked-down hair. He caught her attention because he didn’t wear a hat and didn’t stay long. Jeremy himself wouldn’t be following her, so maybe this was his man, checking her out. A chill moved down her spine. Jeremy’s looks were creepy, but not especially menacing. This man looked cruel.

Watch your back, Lindsey!

She’d already decided that if someone jumped her, she would not go into aikido mode. She was to be strictly a businessperson. If necessary, she’d have to take a beating to stay in character.

It was now nearly five o’clock. A travel brochure had said that the CharlesBridge was a must-see, and that sunset was a good time to visit because one could view the fully lighted Prague castle against the evening sky. She asked Vavrinec for the best place to have a cup of coffee until sunset.

His directions sent her down a narrow, cobbled side street. Converted burgher homes with red-tiled roofs, four and five stories high, created a canyon of city walls on either side. Pedestrian traffic was steady but light.

She’d nearly reached the coffee shop when a black sedan braked beside her. Two men wearing black ski masks leaped out from the passenger side.

Loschetter! She hunched, prepared to fight, but caught herself in time. Stay in cover! This was a move to test her.

She faked an ear-shattering shriek and swung her purse, spinning and slipping awkwardly, as though unable to get footing in the snow. The purse slid harmlessly off the bigger man.

The second man grabbed her from the rear around the neck and pulled her against his chest. She shrieked again and shouted, “Help!” as she resisted her trained response to bite his hand, whirl and kick his balls.

She pushed against him and they staggered backward a couple of steps. The taller creep was closing in when a man in black wearing dark sunglasses crashed into him.

The man holding her spun them both around and threw Lindsey against the building, into the front of a bookstore. She slid to the ground, striking a wooden book rack as she fell. She ignored a sudden, sharp burning sensation on her neck, scrambling to regain her footing.

Chapter 15

M arko made a flying tackle into the hooded goon with the knife, sunglasses falling off on impact. At the corner of his vision he saw Lindsey fall. How could Lindsey be so foolish as to be out alone on the lightly trafficked street? How could this woman, who was so extremely capable when dealing with criminals, be so clumsy in her own defense?

He and his opponent scrambled to their feet. The man had lost the knife in the snow. He took a swing and planted a solid right to Marko’s cheek. Marko returned the blow with one of his own to the man’s stomach.

The man doubled over, at the same time yelling something in strangled Czech and waving a hand toward the car. Lindsey stumbled into Marko’s arms. She grabbed him as though terrified, but when she spoke she whispered, “Let them go.”

The two men jumped into the car, which squealed with the sound of tires burning rubber as they took off.

Still in Marko’s arms, Lindsey looked up at him. She had a cut on her neck, and her pulse pounded in the crook of her throat. She looked angry, but safe. A wild, crazed urge to kiss her welled up in him.

She pushed herself out of his arms as an elderly Czech couple and a pair of Anglo girls rushed up. “Are you all right?” one of the girls asked with an American accent. The bookstore owner stepped outside his door, taking in the scene.

Lindsey smiled and assured everyone, first in Italian and then English, that she was fine. The older woman pointed to Lindsey’s neck and handed her a handkerchief. After more reassuring gestures from Lindsey, the owner returned to the comfort of his store and the concerned citizens went their ways.

Her face flushed, pressing the handkerchief to the wound, Lindsey turned to Marko. He flashed on the arousing thought that the earlier fake hug of terror might be followed by a hug of gratitude.

“You idiot!” she said quietly, but with force. “What are you doing here?”

Idiot! Some gratitude!

Furious, he countered. “What are you doing here, Sylvia?”

Chapter 16

I f Marko had slapped her, Lindsey could not have been more stunned. “Sylvia?” she said, repeating him.

“Right. Sylvia Platt.”

“Damn it! You’ve been following me.”

“Since youweleft Florence.”

“You have no right”

“It wasn’t my choice. K-bar is worried about you.”

“My father sent you?”

“Sounds harsh when you put it that way. But true.”

So much anger was boiling inside that she couldn’t find words to express it. A young girl’s life was on the line, and her father’s meddling and Marko’s interference may have compromised her entire mission. She stared at him, wanting to scream, You may have killed her! But she choked it back.

She clenched a fist, fighting for control of whirling emotions. When he’d held her in his arms, she had looked up at him, furious, her heart racing. But she’d had the insane thought that he was going to kiss her, and more insane still, she wanted him to in spite of the fact that he’d ruined everything. “I’m here for a purpose. I know exactly what I’m doing. And you have probably messed up something very important.”

“Messed up? The guy was going to kill you.”

“It was a test, Marko. At worst they might have taken me with them, and that would have served my purpose fine. Now you’ve botched that.”

“He wasn’t taking you anywhere. What about the knife?”

“Knife?”

Marko snorted. “The knife he was going to stick into your guts.”

“There was no knife.”

Marko grabbed her gloved hand and tugged her toward snow piled beside the bookstore doorway. Bending down, he brushed a few inches of white fluff aside and then, saying nothing, held out a serrated knife with an open five-inch switchblade.

A shiver swept through her, head to toe. Had Loschetter sent the men to kill her? It was possible, and it would mean that he didn’t buy her cover story and suspected she was some sort of agent. On the other hand, maybe the knife was simply to be used to persuade her to come with them. There was no way to know. And she could certainly understand, now, why Marko had felt the need to barge in.

She looked around for her purse. Gone. That was a plus. She was free of the tracking device and her faked credentials would soon be in Loschetter’s hands. Maybe they would convince him of her authenticity.

“Okay.” She felt herself relaxing. “I’ll concede you may have thought they were going to harm me.”

“Well, that’s a crazy thing to say. Two hooded men leap at you. What else would I think? That they were going to ask if you wanted a tour? Even if he hadn’t had a knife.”

Again she felt a chill. “Let’s walk. I’m getting cold just standing here.” He retrieved his dark glasses, and then she led them toward the CharlesBridge where they could easily find taxis. “I have a room in a hotel.”

“I know. I also took a room there.”

“In my hotel! Unbelievable! I’m furious with myself that I didn’t spot you.”

“Your dad employs me because I’m good at what I do. So what’s going on, Lindsey?”

“I can’t say. And it’s a damn shame that K-bar has interfered.”

“He’s a father. He thinks you may be into something more dangerous than an art buyback.”

“Marko, I can’t tell you what I’m doing. But I believe this was just a test. To see how I would respond. Basically to see if I’m who I’m pretending to be, a representative of a pharmaceutical company.”

“Well, if that was your intention, you fooled me.” He chuckled. “K-bar told me you attended a school for girl spies that taught you everything from survival techniques to martial arts to bomb-making, but it looked to me from that flaky swing of your purse that you were in big trouble.”

“Well, let’s hope they think so, too. The problem is, they need to think I’m alone, not with a partner.”

They trekked down narrow old streets, snow piled in banks beside barren trees. The arched spans of the Gothic bridge came into view. Built in the middle ages, CharlesBridge no longer carried vehicles, only foot traffic. Even on a thirty-degree winter day, a few artists, musicians, vendors and tourists sold wares or milled about. The towers on both ends offered climbers great views of the beautiful old city.

“They can just as well think I’m some guy on the street who barged in to rescue a stranger and is now escorting the frightened lady with no money and no papers back to her hotel.”

They reached the entry to the bridge and the clusters of people crossing it. She turned and looked up at the massive castle, the largest castle complex in Europe, maybe the world, now lighted for the night as the sun was setting. “They say the view from the bridge is spectacular. Let’s walk across. There will be cabs on the other side.”

They started across, and he took her arm, as though they were friends on a stroll, pulling her close against him. She liked the feel of being beside Marko, a man of action. Half an hour had passed since that look in his eyes when she thought he might kiss her. And she’d wanted him to, hadn’t she? She could feel his attentiveness as they moved side by side, making their steps match. If she smiled at him in this moment, she was pretty certain that he’d melt. This thought warmed her, despite the cold and the shivers from the adrenaline letdown. Suddenly she felt gratitude. He had risked himself to save her. “I’m calming down. I need to thank you for trying to help me.”

“Thanks gratefully accepted. In return, will you tell me what’s going on?”

She shook her head, and he didn’t press further.

An old man bundled in dark gray was roasting chestnuts the old-fashioned way over heated sand with added sugar. The nuts absorbed the sugar from the sand while they toasted, making the sweet chestnuts even sweeter. She heard the “popo-popo” sounds the nuts emitted when the shells turned brown, indicating that the toasting was done. The vendor handed Marko a bag, and Lindsey savored the taste of her first golden bite.

For a while they enjoyed the chestnuts and the stunning view of a fairy-tale castle covered in white snow and cast against a pastel mauve-and-purple sunset. Her reverie was abruptly broken when Marko said, “I should get you to the hotel. You should clean the wound on your neck.”

What was wrong with her? Falling into a fairy tale when lives were at stake!

Several imposing statues lined both sides of the bridge, and as they passed one, a patch on the statue’s dark patina caught Lindsey’s attention. “Wait, Marko,” she said, and took his hand, drawing him to the statue. The shiny spot covered a woman and a dog on a relief scene near the statue’s base. “Legend has it,” she said, “that if you rub the dog’s nose, a secret will be revealed.”

She took off her glove. The secret she wanted to knowwhere Teal was being kept. She rubbed the dog’s nose. But she gave the nose a second burnishing because she also wanted Marko to somehow know about the secret side of herself. Despite what she knew had to be, she would love to confide in Marko.

“You want to have a secret revealed?” she asked, waiting to see if he’d join in the fun with her.

“Sure,” he said. He took off his glove and gave the dog’s nose a vigorous polishing.

“So can I tell you my wish?” he asked as he took her arm and drew her close again, “or will that cancel the spell?”

She leaned into him and looked up at his face. “I don’t know. The brochure I read didn’t say.”

He grinned, a lovely smile with straight, white teeth and lips edged by corners that turned up. “Then we better not take a chance. Better keep our wishes to ourselves. I definitely want mine to come true.”

Snow started falling when they reached the other end of the bridge. They found a taxi stand and were soon back at the hotel.

At the elevators she said, “I’m on the sixth floor.”

“So am I.”

“Jeez, Marko.”

They rode up in silence, but when they stepped out, he said, “I have a small emergency travel kit with antiseptic. I could go get it.”

Marko. In her room with her. The two of them alone. She should say no.

“Sure. That would be fine.”

Chapter 17

T he more Jeremy Loschetter obsessed over the possibility that an Athena woman had discovered his whereabouts, the more he felt as though something had him by the throat. Darkness had settled in on the old chateau. The place had proved difficult to light. No matter how much wattage burned, the angles of the vaulted ceilings, beams, nooks and crannies all cast black shadows.

He sat near the fire in the den with his latest missive from A in his hand, the one that had explained exactly how, where and when to hook up with Tulio for the Colombian connection of the kidnapping. He stared at the letterhead, a spider’s web. He was frequently drawn to these letters and studied them for style, trying to figure out who A could be. What age? What nationality?

He could tell nothing. “May you be skinned and burned alive!”

His predicament was his own fault, which made it all the more maddening. Knowing that before his death, Aldrich Peters had been dealing with this A, after fleeing the lab, Jeremy had used information he’d stolen to contact A, thinking he could do the same business as Peters. What a stupid, stupid move that had been. All for love of excellence in science, for the chance at the recognition he deserved, the chance to stagger the smug geneticists of the world with his own brilliance. But now A called the shots. A knew too much about him, would sabotage him at every turn if he didn’t play ball. Tomorrow night’s auction could change all that. The future of his new fertility company depended on it.

He returned the letter to the safe, closed its door, and threw himself in anguish and disgust into the swivel chair.

When will Pietro show? I must know that the new woman is no longer a threat.

The auction of genetic secrets seemed to be veering out of control. First, the Platt woman, a new bidder at the last moment. Then the meeting with Foo Hai, the representative from Hong Kong, had taken place in the bar of the Hotel Vlensk, in the middle of OldTown. It had gone well, although he found the man even more menacing in his silence than Pietro could sometimes be. Jeremy had returned to the chateau at five-thirty. It was now approaching six o’clock.

His gut was in knots. He pictured angry ulcerous lesions just where his stomach joined his duodenum, undefended against the hot baths of hydrochloric acid and pepsin ever since he’d started this project. Take a deep breath!

He pictured the black, poisonous spider in his shoe. That was surely no accident. Had A punished him for losing the second girl? Hired one of the Colombians to try and kill him? The knot at his duodenum squeezed tighter.

He would like to think of himself as fearless in the pursuit of science, but his body seemed to think otherwise. There was no going back, though. He could see no other route of escape from A’s hold on him. And yet, he had the Arnett girl. He had the Lab 33 files. He, and he alone, knew all aspects of the procedures. He would not back down from his plan to cut A out of his profit.

Still, so much could go wrong.

The woman he hired for cleaning and making evening meals had set a fire in the fireplace. He rose and stood with his back to the cedar-scented blaze, thinking of the strange taste of his tea at dinner. Could A have sent someone here to poison him? A knock on the door caused him to flinch. “Enter!” he called out.

The very sight of Pietro caused that miserable fist in his stomach to clamp down again. “Is she dead?” Jeremy asked.

In his hand, Pietro held a woman’s black purse. “You got this woman wrong.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“She is not an Athena woman, that is certain.”

“Is she dead?” Jeremy repeated.

“No. But not because we had any trouble with her. A man from the street tried to be a hero.”

For a moment, anger and fear choked off his breath, then he exploded. “You didn’t kill her?”

“Cool down. This is no problem. She was a screaming, hysterical woman. If the man had not interfered, I could have killed her easy. Now we have her papers. We can check her out.”

“Maybe the man was with her. A partner.”

“No. He just came running down the street.”

“Hmmm.” Certainly he would not expect a woman who was spying for Athena in this kind of undercover operation to have a partner backing her up in the way Pietro had described. Athena women were famous for being able to handle a man like Pietro on their own, the reason Jeremy had insisted that Pietro take Hudak along.

Pietro continued. “We should not panic. We check out her papers. There is a passport. Credit cards. An international driver’s license. There’s a bank debit card from an Italian bank. I can handle most of it.”

Jeremy hated to turn to A’s astonishing resources, but A had ways of checking out information and accounts. He refused to deal with A directly, thoughPietro would handle it. “All right. Contact A. I already called the woman’s company. Griffin Pharmaceuticals. They confirmed that Sylvia Platt works for them.”

Jeremy felt stymied, but the knot in his stomach slowly uncoiled. He moved from the fire, which now felt too warm, and sat again at the desk. If A found out that Jeremy had rejected a legitimate bidder, and a possibly very high bidder at that, there could be serious and unpleasant repercussions. It might have been disastrous to have killed her. Perhaps it was good fortune that Pietro had failed.

Pietro approached the desk, and leaning down with both hands on it, said, “The transmitter is off the Platt woman. Send Hudak to the hotel. See if we can pick her up. He is a good shadow.”

Jeremy said nothing. Pietro, as always, was pushing him, the meat-brained sleaze. As Pietro turned to leave, Jeremy glimpsed what looked like a small tattoo of a spiderweb hidden beneath Pietro’s collar-length hair. He’d had no reason to connect A with Pietro before, but a chill wiggled down Jeremy’s spine. “What is the significance of the tattoo you have on your neck?”

Pietro slowly turned to face him. “Why the fuck you ask that?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Well, there is no significance. I just liked it. Why you always wear that ring?”

“The ring stands for excellence in learning.”

“Well, my tattoo stands for time in jail.”

They were at a draw, but the images of a spider’s web on A’s letter and on Pietro’s neck

Jeremy hated this kind of coincidence.

For the moment he must let it go. “Do as you say. Check out everything and have Hudak tail her.”

If the beautiful Sylvia Platt could not pass inspection, he could send Pietro again. Surely Pietro would not screw up twice.

Pietro left and Jeremy returned to the fire, a chill in his bones despite the heat.

Chapter 18

M arko knocked on the door to Lindsey’s hotel room with his emergency travel kit in hand, still wearing his coat. Keep the coat on, he advised himself. Lindsey would understand that he didn’t intend to be invited in.

She’s K-bar’s daughter. You will keep your damn hands off.

She opened the door and smiled. The black suit, the slicked-back dark-red hair, everything about her still said dangerous, but sweet Madonna, she was beautiful.

“Come in,” she said. “You must see this exquisite stove.”

He knew what she meant about the stove. The hotel receptionist had explained when Marko registered that one of the hotel’s features was that the suites were not only decorated with authentic reproductions of period furniture, each was warmed by an antique, wood-burning ceramic tile stove.

A little voice at the back of his mind whispered, “Say no.” But hadn’t K-bar sent him here to find out what she was doing? Wasn’t this the perfect time to squeeze out the juice, while she was relieved, recovering from stress?

He went in, for the second time today, but now the room was toasty. Apparently staff fired up the stove early in the evening so that guests did not return to a cold suite. His single room provided no such luxury.

“Let me take your coat,” Lindsey said.

She moved close to him and he smelled just the hint of a perfume that reminded him of

of a ripe peach. He watched the sway of her hips as she carried the coat to an entry closet in the sitting room. You will keep your damn hands off.

When he’d dashed into the room behind the maid, he’d paid little attention to its details. The space was small but the furnishings shouted money. The antique stove stood in the far corner, the flickering light of the burning wood shining out through the glass fire door. The stove’s enameled color was a pale green that matched the forest green of the furniture. Like virtually all of these classic old stoves, it was decorated with crenellations studded with many colors of tiles, in this instance mostly red and gold. The tiles along the top created flower patterns.

A red Oriental rug covered a parquet floor. From the center of the stark white ceiling hung a crystal chandelier, and on the plaster someone had painted a mural of a forest scene with scantily clad nymphs. A desk stood in another corner with Lindsey’s laptop sitting open on it. A comfortable sofa and two chairs had been arranged so that occupants could enjoy the stove or a TV. There was an armoire that, if opened, probably held a minibar. And in the room’s center, under the mural, was a table of finely inlaid woods on which sat a vase of white roses and a bowl of fruit.

He helped himself to a red-skinned apple, following Lindsey to the stove. “It’s a Gyula Kovacs,” she said of the stove. “He was a Hungarian master. Nearly a hundred years old and still working beautifully.”

He bit into the apple’s sharp sweetness, set it down and held out the kit. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

She started to touch the wound, and he grabbed her hand.

She didn’t immediately pull her hand away from him.

Why not just pull her into my arms and kiss her? That’s what I want.

“Okay,” she said, as if in response to his thought and not his words. He let go. She took the kit from him and turned toward the bathroom.

He followed her.

“Fortunately,” she said, smiling and using the mirror to examine where she’d been cut, “blood won’t show up against black.”

“Sit and I’ll clean it.”

She gazed into his eyes a moment and then sat, and he felt his pulse rise a notch.

The bathroom floor was tiled in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern. The tub, sink, toilet and bidet were virgin white, and all the fixtures gleamed like gold. He wet a fluffy white washcloth as she tilted her head, exposing the wound, which had bled a lot but was shallow.

“A cut at the neck is very dangerous. You’re lucky it was just a nick.”

She touched the scar under his left eye. A jolt of fire flashed over his chest and down his belly. Madre di Dio, did this woman have any idea what she was doing to him? What the hell was she thinking? And what the hell was he doing?

“How did you get this?” she asked.

He took a long, deep breath. “I took a crazy dare when I was fifteen. I was raised in Venice, and I jumped off a balcony into a canal. I hit a boat.”

She smiled. “I have no trouble imagining you taking a lot of crazy dares.”

“What about you? K-bar says the school you went to was full of girls who learned to meet any challenge. I suppose you did your share of risky things.”

“The years in Phoenix were wonderful. I met friends with whom I’m still close.”

“It’s clean now.” He reached for the tube of antiseptic.

“I learned how to take care of myself in a lot of situations, but I also have memories of being very scared.”

He remembered her trembling against him on the plane, the stiffness of her body, the paleness. It hadn’t been the excitement. She’d been terrified of the jump. He had another thought, given her risky side business and what she was doing now. “Did you ever tell your dad it was scary?”

She stiffened and shook her head. “No. Of course not. Scary would be the wrong word with K-bar.” She relaxed again as he put the cap back on the antiseptic tube. “I just meant challenging. I wanted to make K-bar proud.” Her lips thinned. “That wasn’tisn’talways easy to do. He has very high standards.”

He recalled her apartmenther paintingsher apparent preference for art and history rather than martial arts and weapons. Was it possible that Lindsey was caught up in continually pushing herself to impress her father? Unlike Marko’s by-the-gut way of working, Lindsey was methodical, maybe a reflection of essential cautiousness. “I can tell you that he is proud of you. I’d say he adores you.”

She looked up at him with those huge, dove-gray eyes. His gaze traveled from her eyes to her lips. Luscious. Would she taste faintly of peach, like the scent of her perfume? “Why do you do this

dangerous stuff? You could have been killed this afternoon. If your father dared you to plant yourself in front of a high-speed locomotive and only jump away at the last minute, would you do it?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course not. He’d never ask such a thing.”

The uneasy look in her eyes suggested that she wasn’t all that sure of what K-bar might expect of her. “What the hell are you doing here in Prague? Tell me, Lindsey. I could help you.”

She stood. The urge to kiss her shook him so hard that he stepped backward quickly. Was he imagining it, or had she seemed to hesitate for a moment, as if expecting a kiss, maybe wanting a kiss?

She led him out of the bathroom. “I’ve already called K-bar,” she said. “While you were fetching the antiseptic. I couldn’t reach him, but I left a message telling him that I’m sending you home. First thing tomorrow, you should fly back.”

“Cristo!” He grabbed both her arms. “K-bar will be furious with me. I wasn’t to let you know I’m here.” She twisted from his grip. He shouldn’t have touched her.

“I can’t help that. I expect he’ll understand when you explain why you barged in. But the bottom line is that I have to be here, and I have to be here alone.” She licked her lips. “I need to concentrate on what I have to do. I can’t have any

distractions.”

He felt like pounding his fist in frustration, and stopped himself by turning away abruptly to cut loose from the aura of sex and conflict sizzling between them.

Patience, Marko, he cautioned himself. He grasped at the only exit that popped into his head. “Are you hungry? I think we need to go to dinner. Get a taxi and get away from here.”

She drew in a long, raspy breath. “We definitely need to go to dinner.” She snatched at the distraction he’d offered, then quickly added, “But it must look like I’m simply thanking you for saving me.”

No way would he leave Lindsey alone in Prague now, not even if K-bar ordered it.

Chapter 19

A single loud knock sounded on the door to Jeremy’s den. Pietro strode in without waiting for Jeremy to say enter. The old-fashioned brass hands of Jeremy’s desk clock read 10:33. Normally he would have gone to bed by now. Too nervous, unable to sleep until the matter of Sylvia Platt was resolved satisfactorily, Jeremy had brewed a concoction of calcium and mucosal protective agents to soothe the raw pain in his stomach. He sat in his night clothes, sipping it.

“What do you have?” he asked Pietro.

“Everything I could check out seems in order.”

“And from A?”

“A fax came in only minutes ago. All items on Platt came back clean. We wait only for results on the woman’s phone records.”

“Fine.” Jeremy should feel better. He didn’t.

Pietro pulled an armchair close to the fire, dropped into the chair and propped his heels on the brass fender.

“What about the Arnett girl?” Jeremy asked.

“As you ordered, I stopped feeding her two days ago. She has stopped yelling and banging. I still hear her weeping once in a while. She will be ready.” Pietro folded his hands behind his head and stared at the fire. “So who do you think will come up with the high bid?”

All the bidders had gathered in Prague now. Jeremy swallowed the last of the potion and the duodenal pain dulled a bit. All but the Platt woman had instructions for where and when they would be picked up for tomorrow’s demonstration. He fingered the printout of the assets of Griffin Pharmaceuticals. “Assuming Platt is genuine, I’d say Griffin Pharmaceuticals might pay the most.” He pictured the other potential bidders. “It isn’t likely to be the scar-faced martinet who represents the Kestonians’ new dictator. Vlados Zelasko is a third-rate petty tyrant. Certifiably insane in my opinion. He and the North Koreans are perfect examples of terrorists who fear the power of the United States and know they can’t fight with conventional weapons. Zelasko’s mouthpiece will, unless I am much in error, try to buy with unstable currency, even though I made it clear to Zelasko that it had to be euros, dollars, or pounds sterling.”

“I think our high bidder will be the Russian woman,” Pietro said, helping himself to the brandy Jeremy wanted to drink but couldn’t. “A is sure her backer isn’t the research geneticist at MoscowUniversity but the Russian defense laboratory the professor works for. That means government money. Big money. The woman is an expendable front. The bitch probably doesn’t even know who she represents.”

“Possibly. But even if it is the Russian government, can Russian money compete with a big international pharmaceutical like Griffin if Griffin really wants the buy?”

Pietro made no comment to that and they sat in silence, listening to the crackling of the fire.

Finally Jeremy said, “I do not like Foo Hai.”

Pietro’s lips twisted into a sneer. “Why? Because he’s tall and handsome?”

Insulting little bastard! “I don’t like him, you miscreant, because I don’t understand his motivation. He doesn’t represent a government, like the Russian woman or the little North Korean or the Kestonian. And he’s not affiliated with a business, like the Platt woman. I couldn’t get him to say anything beyond the fact that his buyer is extremely wealthy, will be outbid by no one, and is interested in genetic engineering of humans. If they don’t want the buy for business or for some military, then for what? And all that black clothing.” Jeremy snorted his disgust. “It’s very affected.”

“Guess he figures he doesn’t need to talk. His money will talk for him.” Pietro’s gaze had been steady and smug, but now it darted from the fire to Jeremy’s face and back.

Pietro seemed to know something. Jeremy probed. “What did A’s sources say about the pendant?”

The menacing Asian with the ponytail had worn a pendant around his neck with symbols in gold against a hexagon of black onyx. Pietro had, of course, surreptitiously taken several dozen photos of Foo Hai when Foo Hai came out of the meeting with Jeremy. They’d sent a blowup of the pendant to A.

“Chinese symbols. They stand for the female name, Kwan-sook. Impossible to know why he would wear a woman’s name. His mother’s? His mistress’s? Maybe it is a business named after a woman. Ask him.”

Jeremy had started to ask the meaning of the pendant during his meeting with Foo Hai but a sense that he did not want to anger Foo had clamped his mouth shut. “If it’s a business big enough to bid for what I’m selling, why could neither you nor A find any information about it?” A little chill tickled the hairs on the back of his neck just thinking about Foo.

At a knock on the door, Jeremy called out, “Enter.”

A young boy Pietro used to run errands entered carrying a fax. He looked from Pietro to Jeremy, then back to Pietro, who gestured that he should take the fax to Jeremy.

At the top was the familiar spider’s web. The message read:

Platt phone records check out. This woman is a legitimate buyer. Act accordingly.

Jeremy drew in a long breath and exhaled. Everything was now in place. Noting that he was now rather looking forward to seeing the sultry Sylvia again, he picked up the receiver to his landline.

Chapter 20

T he snow steadily fluttered down in nickel-sized flakes outside the restaurant window all during Lindsey’s dinner with Marko. She had joined him in sharing a pot of traditional potato soup, but their tastes separated over the main course. He went for pork roast with dumplings and sauerkraut, she for salmon and rice.

He also insisted on dessertdelicate crepes stuffed with strawberry jamand he didn’t mind when she wanted to share just a bite, a plus on the scorecard she realized she was keeping in spite of the fact that she had absolutely no reason to be keeping score.

When they stepped out into the snow, he took her arm and with matching steps they waded through new-fallen powder that glistened in the streetlights.

Marko said softly, “We’re being followed.”

“I know.” She didn’t add any explanation and decided that when they reached the hotel she would insist that he make no further contact with her and return to Florence ASAP.

Their hotel lay only half a block from the restaurant, and they were walking up the entry steps when her new cell phone rang, a backup that had also been in the package prepared for her by Sam.

She stopped. It was late. “I need to take this call, Marko. Please go on in without me. And please do not contact me further. I’ll see you again when I return to Florence.”

It wasn’t a request and he knew it. His lips thinned. “You’re making a damn big mistake, Lindsey. I could help you.” When she said nothing, he spun around and continued into the lobby.

The phone’s LCD display indicated that the incoming call was not encrypted. “Sylvia Platt,” she said, keeping her voice hard and in charge. She stepped away from the door and to one side.

“I hope I am not disturbing your sleep,” Jeremy Loschetter said.

“Not at all. I’m just returning from dinner.”

“You are dining so late alone?”

“Actually, no. I had a

a bit of a problem today, and a very capable man came to my assistance. We shared a dinner before he leaves Prague.”

“I hope your problem wasn’t serious.”

“I’d rather not talk about it. I’d rather talk about the buy.”

“I look forward to meeting you again. I’m sure you will understand that I require a certain amount of secrecy. You will be picked up tomorrow evening in front of Betlem Chapel at 6:00 p.m. Your hotel concierge can direct you. It is not far from your own hotel but in a quieter, more private, neighborhood. Please do not be distressed, but my man will blindfold you.”

He needed to feel she was no pushover. With sarcasm she said, “I’m already distressed,” with heavy emphasis on the distressed. “Is that really necessary?”

“I set the terms for this sale.”

“Yes. I suppose you do.”

“There is something else. You will experience a firsthand demonstration of psychic ability.”

She inhaled deeply, flushed with a surge of triumph that she struggled to keep in control. A firsthand demonstration could only mean that Teal would be present at the demonstration. “I have no problem with that.”

“If you wish, you may bring one other person with you. I would suggest someone who is psychic. Someone, obviously, whom you trust completely.”

“What the hell! How can I fetch a psychic here in time?”

“It’s the best that I can offer. You have joined us very late. Perhaps you don’t have sufficient resources to make this purchase. That is your problem, not mine.”

“Then let’s finish this conversation. I have to make inquiries immediately.”

“You will recognize my man because he will have a red-and-black checkered scarf at his neck.”

She hung up. A psychic? Did she really need one? She hurried into the lobby and fidgeted during a much-too-long wait for the elevator. In her room, she immediately called Sam.

“What else can it mean,” Sam said, “but that he has Teal and he will show her off? This is fantastically good news. I’ll pass it along immediately. Now about this psychic thing?”

“Do I need one?”

“I’ll check that out with Christine, but I’m going to say yes for now. If she also feels it’s essential, I’m sure she can use her influence to scramble up such a person. Believe it or not, there was a time when the Eastern European secret services thought that having a psychic on hand would solve their intelligence problems. Our government even spent a lot of money to determine the potential. Turned out, in most instances, the gift was too hit-and-miss to work for espionage.”

“Maybe that will change. Girls like Teal may be the future.”

“Maybe so. For now, I’ll talk to Christine. Other European stations might have someone who could reach Prague in time. The genuine benefit would be that you’d have company. I hate to think of you alone with Jeremy in his nasty little den of thieves. And if we could actually find a trained operative, all the better.”

“I was certainly hoping for some backup. If it turns out that this is, in fact, where they have Teal, I’m going to need an extraction team immediately.”

“I doubt CIA can be any help there. But I asked for and received time off. Christine and Allison both anticipated that you’d need some backup. So, I’ll be coming myself. I hope to reach Prague before the demonstration, but to be honest, it’s a long shot. For the demonstration you will likely be on your own.”

“It is what it is. I can handle it, but I’ll be extremely happy to have you here.” She checked the clock on the computer. “It’s now after eleven my time, and I’m exhausted.”

“Go to bed. Get what rest you can. I’ll be on my way shortly.”

Lindsey thought of something else. “I have a man following me. Probably one of Jeremy’s henchmen. I’ll have to ditch him tomorrow early.”

Sam paused.

“‘Night, Sam.”

“Anything else I need to know?”

She thought about confessing that her father had put Marko onto her but decided there was no need to mention it. He was now out of the picture. “No. Nothing.”

Her body craved sleep, but first she must make one more call. She dialed.

“Pronto,” she heard Tito growl.

She’d met Tito eight years ago when Tito still worked for K-bar. The burly muscleman was one of NSI’s best security enforcers, a tough talker with a sapphire stud in one pierced ear. Lindsey had discovered he was, in secret, an art lover and amateur painter. After that, they hit it off famously. Then six years ago Tito left NSI to start his own private company. NSI took on security for corporate clients. Tito provided crack security teams for rich private parties who needed someone top-notch to guard an expensive transport or to find and rescue a kidnapped loved one. Most of Tito’s business was in Africa, with occasional jobs in the Middle East. He helped Lindsey with the art buybacks out of friendship, not for the money.

“Are you in bed?” she asked.

“Lindsey?”

“I need help, Tito. Big time. And it has to be kept ultrasecret.”

Chapter 21

O ld Prague in the morning, when Lindsey stepped out of her hotel, was a city of Romanesque red-tile roofs, steep Gothic gables, towers and, of course, spires, a city awakening under a crystal-clear sky and a blanket of fresh snow. She again wore the simple blue sweater and black slacks. The doorman greeted her, and, encouraged by the strong possibility that by this evening she might actually have found Teal, she gave him a warm smile.

She had called the concierge earlier and asked that a taxi be waiting and that the driver must speak English or Italian. As the doorman held open the rear passenger door, Lindsey knocked on the cabbie’s window. He rolled it down. “Yes, madam,” he said in English.

“Just checking.” She climbed in.

She had glanced around to see if she could spy Jeremy’s man, but if he was still on her, it wasn’t immediately obvious. The doorman closed the door.

Her driver asked, “Where do you wish to go?”

“I have a destination in mind. I want to purchase something for my husband. But a man, an ex-boyfriend, has been following me. Do you think you could lose him? I will pay you extra.”

The man turned and smiled broadly. She guessed him to be in his late fifties and one front tooth had been capped with silver. “You are a beautiful woman. It does not surprise me that a man would hate to lose you.”

“Can you help me?”

“Just you watch. And no need to pay extra. Only what the meter says.” He flipped up a flag on the taxi’s meter, checked his rearview and side mirrors, and briskly pulled away from the hotel into the business traffic on Vaclavské Boulevard

.

Claire turned around to watch behind. The first vehicle to join the stream of traffic was a truck, obviously not the transport choice of a shadow. The next to pull into the traffic was a dull brown Opel, and behind the Opel, a Silver Renault Clio. Her driver made a left turn.

He maneuvered skillfully west toward the VltavaRiver. Again she looked behind to find that all three vehicles were still behind them. Shortly they passed the Betlem Chapel, the place where Jeremy’s man would pick her up this evening, and as she checked behind again, the truck turned off. Both the Opel and Renault hung with them. The Renault was too far back to get a good look at the driver, but the man in the Opel was covered much as Marko had been, with a fur hat, sunglasses, and a coat pulled up around his neck.

“Two cars I have seen to follow,” the driver said. “I test them now.”

They turned off the main street into a quiet side street behind the Betlem Chapel. Both cars followed.

“More than one man follows you?” the driver asked.

“No. Just my ex.” She did not want this helpful man to think she’d lied to him. Escaping one man could fit into his view of life. Running from two would trigger doubts and questions.

They made two more turns, and both cars hung with them. She had the irritating thought that maybe Marko had not followed her instructions and left Prague. That thought was followed by another, equally irritating because it suggested she had possibly made a miscalculation. Perhaps she’d acted too hastily when she insisted he go home.

“Now I lose them both,” the driver said. He gunned the motor and they shot forward into the southbound traffic on the main boulevard running north and south along the east side of the river.

He zigged and zagged through the traffic with impressive skill and turned right onto a bridge that took them flying across the river. Once on the other side, she looked behind. She saw only the Opel, and it was well behind them, boxed in by two large vans.

“I think you’re doing it,” she said.

The driver checked his rearview. “I make sure.”

Coming off the bridge they turned left and then soon right and then another right. They were heading north, toward Lesser Town. For perhaps ten minutes they threaded their way through narrow streets with no sign of any car behind them while she considered her situation vis-ŕ-vis backup for the demonstration tonight. Perhaps Marko had not left Prague. And maybe that was a good thing. Tito was assembling a team and equipment, but he couldn’t possibly be here by this evening. He hadn’t been certain at all when he would arrive. She could not, however, risk calling Marko on her unsecured cell phone.

They emerged onto Nerudova street

. At the sight of the white exterior of the baroque gem, St. Nicholas Church, she knew where she was again and she felt confident she had lost both tails, assuming that the Renault had actually been following.

“You are a driving genius,” she said.

He looked at her in his rearview mirror and grinned with satisfaction, his silver tooth shining brightly. “Now where does the lady wish to go?”

She gave him the address of the tobacco shop in OldTown. When she walked inside, she was stunned to see Marko. She quickly recovered, however. He must have tailed her there yesterday from the airport when she’d not been on guard. He looked up from a pipe stand he’d been checking out and glowered at her. She smiled, quite pleased, and drew him to the back of the shop where they would not be overheard.

“If you don’t tell me what the hell is going on,” he said, all bristly, “I’m going to inform your father that his worst fears are right.”

“You followed me from the hotel.”

“Damn right. And so did someone else.”

“I lost you both.” She grinned, rubbing it in.

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s okay, Marko.” She gave his arm a friendly squeeze. “I’m actually glad you’re here.”

His jaw dropped.

She continued. “The taxi chase gave me time to think, and I’ll concede that you are right. You can help me. At the moment this op is essentially just me and some paperwork types. I need someone like you now.”

He gave her a slow grin, as though she were talking about something other than work, and the anger in his eyes softened. “Bene. I salute your ability to admit when you are wrong.”

She let the small criticism slide. “Come with me.”

He followed her into the back room and into the elevator. He said nothing but gave her a strange look as they dropped downward.

At first Bendrich protested that she’d brought an outsider into the safe house without first getting an okay. He protested louder still when she said Marko was going to be her backup for the demonstration. But his protests were weak. Since Bendrich could not help her himself, it was perfectly reasonable for her to want cover, and he had instructions to give Lindsey Novak any reasonable assistance.

When she explained that Marko worked for her father’s security company, he’d been fully vetted by NSI, and she could personally vouch for Marko’s competence, Bendrich conceded and introduced him to the other two agents. The woman, Lindsey noted, paid Marko rapt attention with dancing eyes.

Bendrich ushered them into a second room and to a well-equipped desk. “I set this up for you, Lindsey. I’ll fetch another chair.” He looked to Marko. “Sorry, but our space here is rather tight.”

“No problem,” Marko assured him.

Lindsey pulled out her laptop and opened it. “I need to check a couple of things before I start filling you in. Can I trouble you for a couple of coffees first? Black for me.”

He nodded and left her.

She used a secure line to call Sam, who came on almost immediately. She was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. With some embarrassment, Lindsey explained Marko’s presence, but Sam accepted Lindsey’s decision to recruit Marko.

“I’m glad you’ll have some backup, Lindsey, because, well, I have some good news and some bad news.”

“Give me the good news first.”

“Before I left, my friends here located a psychic. She’s a Czech woman born and raised in Prague but living for the last five years in Vienna. She’ll be at the safe house soon.”

“And the bad news?”

“Stefan has been flooded with images and feelings from Teal. The girl is being kept in a dark, cold place. Maybe something underground. Like a small cellar. Stefan said he saw a spider crawling on her face. She’s panicked. Terribly frightened for the first time. They apparently haven’t fed her for three days. Only water. Stefan is nearly overwhelmed with feelings of terror from her.”

The hair in every follicle on Lindsey’s skin rose. Lindsey thought of Jeremy and how she’d like to force him to trade places with Teal.

“Of course, they have no intention of killing her,” Sam said.

“Does she know that? Can Stefan assure her that we’re coming? To hang on?”

“So far, their communication hasn’t worked two ways. Stefan is a powerful receiver and obviously Teal is a powerful sender. But try as he might, he can’t seem to reach her with anything other than the vague sense that someone out here seems to be listening to her. We’re figuring that she can’t read their specific intentions about her.”

“Well, we know she has guts, or she wouldn’t have stayed with them in the first place.” Lindsey struggled to keep her own frustration and fear for Teal from paralyzing her. She must stay sharp and positive. She envisioned Teal’s face turning toward light, no matter how faint, just seeing light and knowing someone was coming for her.

“I have more bad news,” Sam added. “I won’t be able to reach you until very early tomorrow morning, your time.”

“All the more reason for me to keep Marko. I also have some other help coming, Sam. Very experienced help. The best.”

“Excellent. Get to Teal tonight, Lindsey. Let her know she’s not alone.”

They signed off. Marko sat leaning back in a chair on the other side of the desk, waiting patiently, staring at her with his arms crossed. A steaming cup of coffee sat before her.

“This is a CIA safe house,” she said as she began to explain. “I’m not with the company, but I have colleagues who are. I’m here to rescue a young girl who has been kidnapped, and who, I’ve just learned, hasn’t been fed for three days.”

Chapter 22

L indsey waited for Marko’s response. He finally said, “Looks like K-bar’s intuition is dead-on. Working undercover for the CIA is exactly what your father feared.”

“This is actually me working on behalf of my alma mater, AthenaAcademy. An extraction team, some acquaintances of a close friend of mine, will arrive sometime tonight to help me free the girl. If we can find her.”

He shook his head, tipped the chair back to the floor, took up his own coffee cup, and waited for more.

She explained about the kidnapping, that one girl was rescued while the other had voluntarily stayed with her captor for reasons not altogether clear.

He frowned. “How can you know this Teal stayed voluntarily?”

She sipped coffee while she debated how much she could reveal. If she even hinted at the extraordinary history behind a girl like Teal or anything about Teal’s exceptional speed or psychic abilities, Marko would pester her to reveal all. The existence of and the nature of the egg babies was a very tight secret. “On that you’ll just have to trust me.”

“I do trust you,” he said.

His tone was loaded with double meaning, and he held her gaze as though he were holding her by her arms and drawing her close. He smiled softly, and she felt the strangest sensation ripple like a warm, soothing liquid through her chest. She wanted to be in his arms, to be held by him. Hearing sweet things from him, caresses, joking togethershe could imagine it all. But she’d been over this terrain before and no prior relationships had worked. There was no reason to think Marko would be different. She would just end up embroiled in an emotional mess again.

When she didn’t say anything, he said, “So it seems that the AthenaAcademy is much more than just a finishing high school for gifted girls.”

“No. That’s exactly what it is. But many Athena grads, like me, end up in government service. Samantha St. John is coming. She’s one of the Academy’s original graduates and CIA. Of the other four who will arrive, I know only Tito. He works with me. You filled in for him in Naples.”

“So why me?”

She explained about the demonstration of whatever Jeremy Loschetter was selling.

Marko asked the obvious. “What is he selling?”

She struggled again with the problem of how much to divulge. “For now I’d prefer not to speculate. We’ll know after the demonstration.”

He finished his coffee and stood as Bendrich entered their small room with a chubby woman, about fifty years old, at his side. “This is Zuza,” he said, introducing everyone all around.

“I am psychic for you,” Zuza said, smiling sweetly as she took off her outer coat and woolen cap and hung them on a coat peg. Zuza was stout but not from fat. She wore a soft pink shaggy sweater over a long black skirt and both her forearms and calves suggested she was solid. Her features were heavy but her expression was kind and her demeanor calm. Graying blond hair, soft and short, framed her face.

Bendrich left and Marko returned with coffee. Zuza beamed a huge smile at him, a motherly one.

Bendrich returned with another chair and coffee for their new arrival and disappeared.

“I’m glad to have you join us, Zuza. You’re from Prague?”

“Originally. I live now in Vienna.”

“Do you know why we need you?”

“Yes. I am psychic. I was told is good I am black belt, too. I understand this is government business. I am to keep all secret.”

“Yes. Everything you do and see can be told to no one.”

Zuza’s light blue eyes twinkled. “I keep secrets as well as tell them.”

Lindsey stole a glance at Marko, who was frowning, studying Zuza. He must be near boiling over with speculation. To his credit, he didn’t ask even one question. But then, he had been trained by the FFL and K-bar to know that if someone running an operation wanted him to know things, they would tell him.

“Zuza is an interesting name,” Lindsey said.

“It means graceful lily.” Zuza giggled. The name didn’t exactly fit this stout matron now, although perhaps it would have when she was young. She wagged her finger between Lindsey and Marko. “You are lovers?” Lindsey felt her neck burning under the turtleneck sweater.

“No,” she said, at the same moment that Marko, grinning, said, “You really are psychic.”

Zuza frowned, puzzled, then smiled again. “Some t’inks I see I keep to myself. Partners, then. Good workink together.”

Lindsey laughed, thinking how very different she and Marko were; she cautious, he impetuous. “We have worked together and everything went okay in the end.”

Clearly satisfied that she had correctly pegged Lindsey and Marko, Zuza crossed her legs. She now was waiting for information and directions.

Marko asked, “How do you intend to get to this demonstration?”

Lindsey took a few minutes to explain to Zuza that Teal was being held captive, that she and Zuza were to be picked up that evening, and that they would be blindfolded. Lindsey wondered for a moment at Zuza’s motivation: money, past work with the CIA, past work for Athena, hooked on thrills, proud to show off her psychic skill? Whatever it was, she seemed quite at peace to be involved.

Marko said, “I can try to follow the pickup car, but what if I lose you?”

“We do have to do something about that.” From the doorway, she signaled Bendrich in the next room to join them.

“A 310 Rolly Finder Recorder would be perfect,” Marko said.

Lindsey described it to Bendrich. “A combination GPS and recording device about the size of a kidney bean. It can be sewn into the lining of a purse or into clothing or stuck behind a lapel.”

Bendrich shook his head sadly. “I don’t have one. We are not well equipped.”

“Please, Bendrich. See what you can do.” She checked her watch. 11:30. “We have six hours to have a Rolly here in time.”

He left, and she said, “I’m going to need clothing that looks the part and that will accommodate a Rolly. I spotted something at a department store earlier. You two wait for me here, please.”

They both frowned, but let her go. The department store was only a few blocks from the tobacco shop. She loved cashmere, and when she worked an Athena job, whatever she bought in the way of clothing as part of the op she was allowed to keep. She found a stylish black-and-gray cashmere suitthin, more like a skin-hugging skirt and top. Even under the thin wool, the Rolly would have excellent reception.

She purchased a modernistic black and silver necklace and earrings, a black half slip and camisole, and a pair of sophisticated yet also businesslike heels, and then returned to the safe house, where Bendrich announced, beaming happily, that he had found a Rolly in Vienna and that it should arrive in time.

At 5:00 the device had still not been delivered.

With growing alarm, Lindsey slipped into her new outfit. When she came out of the small bathroom, both Zuza and Marko said she looked terrific.

“I’ll be on you all the time, Linds,” Marko assured her.

“You can’t be so worried for me that you come too close and they spot you. That would be even more dangerous for Zuza and me. Are you committed to making this op work, Marko?” She needed his full cooperation for this mission. It wouldn’t be easy to steal Teal away from her captors.

“Yes, of course, Linds. I won’t endanger you or your op. I promise.”

Bendrich came into the room running. He stuck a small package into her hand. “It came, Lindsey.”

She opened the package and the small brown box. She picked up the GPS unit. As she expected, one side was meant to adhere with an adhesive strip. She handed it to Zuza, saying, “Pull off the tape and secure the device into my belly button.” She lifted the hem of the cashmere top and her camisole.

“Have you ever attached one of these?” Marko asked Zuza.

Zuza shrugged. “No. Is not easy?”

“Only if you know what you’re doing.” Marko took the Rolly from Zuza and turned to Lindsey. “Let me do it.”

She felt his warm hands on her belly like an electric shock and sucked in a surprised breath. Taking care, Marko aligned and inserted the small device into her navel and, putting the other hand into the small of her back, pressed it firmly into place. His focus had been professional, but with his hand still spread over her skin, he caught her gaze.

Zuza giggled.

Lindsey brushed his hand away and smoothed the cashmere top down again without taking her gaze from his. “Complicated process,” she scoffed.

“I couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that to lay hands on the boss.”

Zuza patted Lindsey’s arm. “We must go.”

Lindsey warmed with a sense of inappropriate pleasure and irritation with Marko for such boldness. “Damn right, Zuza.” She and Zuza had only twenty minutes to be in place, and it was peak traffic time. Bendrich had a taxi waiting outside the shop. She and Zuza arrived five minutes early at the front of the church where the reformist Jan Hus preached the gospel that got him burned at the stake in 1415.

Promptly at 6:00, a black Opel sedan pulled into the quiet of the cobbled street and two male passengers stepped out. The older man, heavily coated in black and with bushy black eyebrows said, “You cannot take any electronic devices. Let me see what you carry.”

Both she and Zuza had cell phones in their purses and she also had a BlackBerry. He lifted both and gave them to the other man, a boy really, eighteen or so. “The kid keeps them. You get back later. You,” he said to Lindsey, “sit in back with me. You,” he said to Zuza, “up front.”

Zuza looked at Lindsey, an expression Lindsey interpreted as, and so, into the void.

They drove only a few blocks before the driver stopped and Mr. Bushy Brows thrust blindfolds at Lindsey and Zuza. They looked like sleeping eyeshades. She put hers on, and the world went black. Not a hint of light. Peeking out from under these would not be possible. She shivered. The darkness evoked her fear of close, confined, dark places. Thank heavens Marko would never be too far behind.

The driver again pulled them into the traffic.

Chapter 23

F or a short time Lindsey estimated the direction the car was traveling, how many turns and the kinds of sounds, all the while trying to calm her heartbeat. The blindfold tricked her into imagining that swerves were major curves and made her feel like a prisoner. Trying to sense direction quickly became hopelessly confusing. She didn’t have sufficient training in the kinds of memory techniques needed to make the effort useful. Keeping track of where they were would be Marko’s job.

Listening for sounds, she was certain they’d crossed the wide VltavaRiver, and she recognized the distinctive chime of church bells. After maybe fifteen minutes, they passed something that had the nasty reek of a cattle rendering plant. Since they hadn’t recrossed the river, she guessed they might be driving west.

She made no effort to make casual chat with anyone. When the car stopped and hands she assumed belonged to Bushy Brows pulled her out of the backseat, she made the mental note that after the first ten minutes or so, the drive had fewer twists and turns and had taken roughly half an hour.

Not nearly enough to nail the location. “Are you okay, Zuza?”

“Oh, yes. I am fine.”

Brows, or whoever was gripping Lindsey’s upper arm, held it so tight that it hurt and squeezed still harder as he steered her forward. “Let go! This is no way to treat a client, you idiot.”

The grip lessened, but he didn’t release her. You can’t take the brute out of a barbarian. Maybe Jeremy was short on civilized staff.

Her steps shifted from the gravel of what was probably a driveway to solid footing, perhaps flat stone? Sound of a door opening immediately in front of her. So, no entry steps.

“This is very mysterious,” Zuza said, her voice cheerful as if all this treatment were somehow normal. Zuza was a black belt, but also, apparently, an aspiring actress. Or maybe she drew some confidence, as Lindsey did, knowing that Marko wasn’t far behind. “I have a strong image of a tree or trees,” she said softly to Lindsey. “A tree will be important.”

“We can use all the help we can get,” Lindsey said. Even from kindly trees.

Immediately inside, a hollow sound, like a big room with high ceilings. The faint sounds of a piano in the background playing something soothing, perhaps Schubert. Lindsey reached for the blindfold.

“Not yet, please,” Brows said. “Please give me your coat, hat and boots.”

So, the man with the bone-crushing grip did know the word please.

She heard soft footsteps and smelled a lilac perfume. After relieving her of her outer wear, Brows said, “You need to let this lady search you.” Lindsey’s flesh crawled as gentle hands swept over her shoulders, across and under her breasts, and down her sides. In a few seconds, Zuza giggled.

Someone took Lindsey’s arm roughly again, probably Brows, and moved her forward, then up a flight of stairs, and to the right. She had counted thirty paces when another door opened. They entered a room filled with the sounds of perhaps a dozen voices and what she guessed was recorded piano music.

“Take off the blindfold,” Brows commanded.

Lindsey did; he took her blindfold and the one Zuza removed and then, without further comment, stepped into the corner and crossed his arms, now on silent guard. Lindsey searched the large, medieval-looking room for Jeremy. He emerged from a group of four and hurried toward her, stroking his goatee nervously.

His dark brown suit pants hung too low over shiny brown shoes and bagged around the crotch. His jacket, worn over a gray turtleneck wool sweater, was also badly cut. Jeremy was no fashion maven. His cold, light-blue eyes blinked rapidly. He didn’t offer to shake her hand, which was fine by her.

“Good evening, Ms. Platt. You are the last to arrive. I apologize for the necessary security. I’m sure you understand my caution.”

Unsmiling, she regarded him with the cold professionalism and focus of a woman used to making large, unscrupulous financial deals. “My companion is Tara.”

He smiled at Zuza. “You, I believe, are going to have the experience of a lifetime tonight.” Lindsey sensed something smugly sadistic in his look of satisfaction. Returning his attention to Lindsey he continued, eyes gleaming, “Let me introduce you to your competitors.”

Lindsey quickly sized up the room. Gothic arches vaulted the ceiling that curved down into the walls, all finished in clean white plaster. Massive long wooden table in the center. Curved-back Gothic chairs around it. Flickering candles in pewter candlesticks below the tiered gargoyle chandeliers, together casting shadows into the room’s many corners and angles. Instinctively, Lindsey cringed at all the likely places for cobwebs. Was this why Stefan had seen a spider on Teal’s face?

Along the wall to her right, heavy ruby damask drapes closed over a row of windows. Directly opposite Lindsey a small servant’s door led from the room, and opposite the windows, two arched wooden doors undoubtedly also led into other rooms. Always know your exits.

Between the arched doors, a mural of an epic scene looked to be partially restored. It was not done in the Gothic style of the building. The building might be one of Prague’s genuine Gothic structures. She would love to inspect it carefully, but this was not the time.

At the room’s far end, next to the servant’s door, stood the one anomaly: a rectangular box, like a big ice cube of clear plastic, about four feet wide and six feet tall. And in the middle of it, one of the Gothic chairs. Who would be sitting in the chair, visible but beyond the reach of bidders?

She could think of only one answer. These horrid people would be inspecting Teal as if she were a prize horse. Lindsey fought back a shudder.

Her fellow bidders, all presumably representing the true purchasers, now included five men and five women. They stood in clusters at small tables where food and drinks were available, but every so often they looked at the ominous box. Except for the music the room was mostly silent as these somber-faced participants in this criminal auction studied each other. Jeremy’s obvious calculation was that by thrusting all of them into a face-to-face competition it would stimulate higher bids.

Zuza took Lindsey’s arm, drew her aside and whispered, “My skin creeps in this room. Very evil presences here. All of them. That one,” Zuza indicated a barrel-chested man with a face so scarred it looked as if he’d survived an explosion. “He is very dangerous. Military. But most important that you look out for this tall man in black.” Lindsey had already noted the coldly handsome Asian. “The silent one. He is violent. A killer. I am positive.”

She squeezed Zuza’s hand, squelching the urge to reply that it didn’t take ESP to know that everything Zuza said was correct.

Jeremy led the way to the closest group, all of them Asian, and it included the tallest man in the room, the one Zuza feared most.

“We use only first names,” Jeremy said. “Gentlemen, this is Sylvia and Tara.” Jeremy was acting like this was some damn cocktail partya friendly get-together and he the gracious host.

Another man in the group, shorter than Lindsey by six inches, hair cut in a Western style and wearing a dark expensive-looking suit, nodded in her direction. A long, thin mustache drooped on either side of his narrow lips. Thick-lensed, steel-rimmed glasses magnified heavy eye folds.

“This is Yun,” Jeremy said. Yun did not offer to shake hands. Everyone in the room was surely as reluctant as she was to make physical contact. Yun. Might be Korean. And probably North Korean, given the interest in military uses for genetics. The man looked like an accountant, not a wheeler-dealer, but the woman he was with was surely not the power broker of the two.

“And Haneul,” Jeremy added, as if an afterthought. This woman was easily the smallest person present. Her gorgeous red cheongsam was elaborately embroidered with a dragon in green, gold and silver. The psychic, no doubt.

“Good evening,” Lindsey said, cynically going along with Jeremy’s party tone.

“And these gentlemen are,” Jeremy continued, looking up at least four inches to the tall Asian man, “Foo Hai and Bing.” Jeremy named the man next to Foo Hai, but his gaze never left that of Foo Hai.

So, Chinese names. Foo Hai probably had some Anglo ancestry. He could be around forty, but was well muscled and trim at the midsection. Complete with ponytail and dressed all in black, he reminded her of the actor in all those kung fu movies, Steven Segal, except that the man’s features were strongly Asian. Only his height and the lack of an eye fold suggested Anglo genes. This man’s dominating presence was impressive. He wore a black pendant with gold calligraphy, but the symbols were complex. One element looked slightly familiar, but if she had any chance of remembering it she must soon write it down.

Foo Haithat wasn’t likely his real namesimply stared impassively at her, a black, frightening cipher. She felt his gaze touch her throat, felt her skin there tighten.

Bing, probably the psychic, watched her. His gaze felt like it cut right under her skin. His hairline had receded severely, giving him a high, shiny forehead. Short, trimmed mustache. A black mole the size of a nickel on his left cheek sort of pointed toward eyes that shifted and darted, taking in everything.

Lindsey nodded to him coolly and followed Jeremy to a second cluster of four. With Zuza sticking close to her side, Lindsey saw, to her amazement, that what she had thought was a very petite man was actually a boy of about thirteen years.

He had a gentle face, blond hair, cobalt-blue eyes and a noticeably hunched back. Hovering next to him, a stocky woman in her late fifties. Her angular face was made even more severe by dyed black hair cut in a pageboy with bangs. Gaudy red lipstick. Cheap but stylish dark-gray suit. Unfortunately, she looked like a lump and smelled too strongly of attar of roses. But her haughty composure suggested she felt certain of winning the bidding war.

Jeremy introduced them as Galina and Yegor. Their accents, when Galina said “Good evening” and the boy said “hello” confirmed that they were probably as Russian as the names they were using. If they were fronting for the Russian government, they might very well be able to outbid everyone else.

Lindsey’s final set of competitors made up what was perhaps the strangest-looking pair of the whole bunch. The man calling himself Todor was clearly the bidder, and Petia, the tallest person in the room, his psychic. Thin as if recently out of Auschwitz, she had to be six feet three or four. She wore a long black baggy dress, a pewter pendant with a single green stone in it and her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled into a severe bun at the back of her head.

If Petia was extraordinary by her thinness and height, Todor was extraordinary by his ugliness. Burly. Slightly shorter than Jeremy with bulging greenish eyes that made Lindsey think of sunless bogs and peat. His ginger-colored hair was his only asset, as far as she could tell. Big hands with fat fingers and two rings on either hand. Sweat trickled down into the lines of his many scars.

The two people in this room that she would least like to encounter in a dark alley were the big Asian and this pug-faced Todor. How horrid that Teal could fall into the hands of any of these people.

The small door at the far end of the room opened, and a new male joined the party, a slender, sharp dresser in black slacks with a red turtleneck and slick, greasy dark hair, long in back.

Jeremy stepped back from everyone a bit and cleared his throat. “If I may have your attention. I have two announcements. First, you were all relieved of your digital devices as a precaution. But in this day of nanotechnology, I find it necessary to take additional protective measures. I have in my bag of tricks an interference system that disrupts all electronic transmission within a seven-kilometer radius of this site.”

He smiled that smug smile of his as Lindsey’s heart dropped to her stomach. She and Zuza were cut off from Marko. They were totally alone in a den of thieves and cutthroats.

Jeremy continued. “So if any of you thought to detect this location using a GPS, you will be disappointed. The only way you will get from me what I have to offer tonight is by delivering the highest bid, paying, and waiting for me to arrange an exchange. Secondly, I must leave you briefly for something important, but my assistant” he gestured to the mean-looking strong-arm type with slick hair “will remain with you to see to your needs. Please continue to enjoy yourselves.”

Enjoy! Lindsey swallowed back the urge to laugh in contempt. She could see the bulge of a weapon under Slick Hair’s sleek gray jacket. Something about this guy nagged at her. Rather than stare at him, she steered Zuza toward the mural. They looked at it until the man stopped watching them. When he turned to watch Foo Hai on the other side of the room, she saw a tattoo on Slick Hair’s neck behind his right ear. Was that

? Yes, a spider’s web!

A shiver ran along her sides, and the room suddenly felt like a trap. She imagined the spider arriving, ready to devour its victim. To devour her.

He snapped his head back toward her and she saw a colorless mole embedded in one of his eyebrows near the nose bridge. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, but now she did. No longer bundled in his black coat she hadn’t recognized him, but this was none other than the man who’d attacked her with the knife.

Lindsey retreated with Zuza back to the food as she absorbed the knowledge that Jeremy had, as she thought he might, tried to either kidnap her or test her. Clearly Marko’s intervention hadn’t blown her cover.

Zuza whispered, “That man is like a spider.”

Maybe she’d seen the tattoo, or maybe her psychic sense was in high gear. Lindsey thought again of the image Stefan had of a spider on Teal’s face. The heat of immediate loathing was so strong she forced herself to focus on the food lest detestation show in her face. Everyone had resumed drinking and eating silently as they waited for the real action. Todor stepped next to Lindsey, reached past her to a plate laid out with black caviar on crisp white crackers and plunked seven on his plate.

With his arm only inches from hers, she was struck by the heat coming off his body, as though he had a fever. Was he ill? Under intense pressure? Possibly on amphetamines? Runnels of sweat rolled along the grooves of his scarred face. You’d have thought he was a pig roasting on a barbecue spit.

Zuza spoke softly, a nervous edge in her voice. “We are alone. No Marko. Right?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Jeremy approached the ancient dungeon cubicle using a high-powered flashlight, juice and cup in the other hand. At the beginning he and the Colombians had treated the Arnett girl with care. She was, of course, valuable alive, not dead. He hadn’t seen her for three days now. Time to observe the effect of starvation, darkness and total deprivation of human contact on his marvelous creation.

Holding the flashlight under his arm, he took the key from an ancient stone ring, used it to unlock her cellar door and stepped inside. The girl, seated on the floor, flinched and pulled herself into a tight ball, squinting up at first and then covering her eyes from the strong beam.

He switched on the cell’s overhead light. She pulled into an even tighter ball.

“You will straighten yourself up. Comb your hair and wash your face. It’s time now for you to show people what you are worth.”

Hands over her eyes, she sat up straighter. “Please give me something to eat.”

“In few minutes Pietro will fetch you.” He set the pitcher of high-energy juice and the cup on the floor but stood between them and her. She looked so pathetic. Maybe this hadn’t been the best strategy.

“What’s happening?”

“You will do what I ask of you without question. If you do that, I’ll let you live. If you fail to perform satisfactorily”

“Perform? I’m starving. I won’t”

“You listen to me, you little bitch. If you fail to perform satisfactorily, you will be of no use to me. I’ll remove you from the demonstration and have Pietro bind you and bury you alive in the snow.”

She slowly lowered her hands from her face and squinted up at him.

“Do you understand? Do as I wish and live. Fail me and you die.”

Chapter 24

A ll was darkness around Marko, a darkness freezing cold and silent, except for the roar of an occasional car or truck. No moon had risen yet to reflect its light on the surrounding fields of snow. Under patchy starlight, the fields appeared only slightly lighter than the blackness of the wooded hills beyond. He sat, fuming in the rented car, staring at the little receiver in his palm, willing it to come to life and blink again in the compass point crosshairs. It had remained dark for at least fifteen minutes. Something was screwing up this critical GPS link to Lindsey.

A car with two Asian men had also pulled over in the shelter of a stand of evergreens not far behind him. Why? Or rather, who? Whoever they were, it would be one hell of a strange coincidence if they just happened to decide to rest in the same isolated spot where Marko had stopped. The car’s presence triggered all of his alarms, but he had decided against confronting whoever was in it. His task was to keep track of Lindsey, not pick fights.

A black car that had passed at least ten minutes earlier whizzed by again going in the opposite direction. It must have turned around somewhere up the road and now was possibly returning to Prague. The driver had high cheekbones. Someone, scarcely visible, sat in the back.

Cristo! I can’t just sit here doing nothing. He started the motor, left the parked car behind, and took a potholed road he hadn’t tried earlier. As far as he could tell, the car didn’t follow him. At least he couldn’t see headlights.

He slowed at lighted houses and an occasional building, taking in everything he could but having no clue what kind of car might have picked up Lindsey. He repeatedly checked the Rolly but its screen remained ominously black.

When he heard a sound in the distance, he pulled over again and shut off the motor. The noise grew louder and then deafening as a chopper passed overhead, its course zigging and zagging. Damn odd, flying a copter at night.

A Rolly that wouldn’t work, a mysterious car with Asians in it in the middle of Europe and a night-flying helicopter. A lot of things were damn odd.

Thinking maybe someone in the chopper was on the same kind of hunt he was, he followed it, but soon lost it and then couldn’t find the main road again. He backtracked and approached foothills he hadn’t seen before. He’d lost Lindsey and now he was lost.

Headlights flashed on behind him, as if someone had been following his taillights and then suddenly hit him with their brights. A bullet shattered his rear windshield and passed through the front. Instantly, Marko pulled over, braked hard, ducked down, grabbed his gun and returned fire. The approaching car braked to a halt behind him. Another bullet pinged into his car. Two more shots and his left rear tire lost air; he felt the car sink lower.

He went on the offensive, leaping out in a crouch, whirling to take shelter behind the open car door, then rising and firing six rounds into the black car’s windshield. He fired again as the Asian bastards backed up, turned around, and left him there.

Back in the car, his pounding heartbeat slowing, he stared at the Rolly receiver that refused to blink. He let fly a stream of blistering Italian swearwords, ending with stramaledetto.

He was being irrational. It wasn’t his fault the damn receiver wasn’t working. But he felt a sick twisting in his gut. Lindsey. K-bar. Teal. “Stramaledetto!”

Lindsey had to get away from Todor and his stinky sweat. She moved to stand beside the incredibly tall Petia while Todor bragged on about his Kestonian nationality.

“The new order in Kestonia will soon amaze the world,” Todor was saying. “And Vlados Zelasko will be hailed throughout history as the most powerful and effective leader the modern age has ever known.”

Vlados Zelasko, the petty tyrant who had recently killed off his competition and taken over the little country of Kestonia, was known for strutting around in fancy suits, flashy jewelry and, of all things, a Gucci leather twin shoulder holster for his famous Beretta nine-millimeter handguns. He boasted that if half the population didn’t want to see a leader dead, that leader was doing something wrong.

The North Korean, Yun, was nodding with enthusiasm. Foo Hai just stared at Todor with a look of indifference. Galina, the Russian woman, looked as if she wanted to exterminate Todor immediately. The psychics had all stepped back and seemed a bit bored. Lindsey and Zuza eased themselves toward the mural.

“Waiting in this room of murderers is driving me nuts,” she murmured to Zuza. “Do you think something’s happened to Teal? Is that why Jeremy is stalling?”

Zuza shrugged. “I think not, but I don’t know.”

Lindsey forced her attention to the mural. Half of it was covered in thick, white dust, making the figures appear ghostly, but the part that had been cleaned revealed bright colors.

Jeremy’s voice at her side made her flinch. “You enjoy the painting?” he asked. “It was walled in for protection during World War II, so it must be valuable.”

“Let’s get on with this,” Todor boomed from across the room.

“Allow me to accompany you to your chair,” Jeremy said as he took Lindsey’s arm.

She was pleased that she successfully suppressed her instinct to snatch her arm from his touch. He led her and Zuza to the acrylic cubicle, to a pair of Gothic chairs nearest the servant’s door.

A TV had been rolled in beside the cubicle and pairs of chairs were arranged in front of it at discreet distances apart. Foo Hai hadn’t waited for his psychic Bing to catch up. He strode to the center chair and claimed it. Bing scurried up beside him. Todor looked as if he were about to order Foo Hai to yield the center seat, but Foo Hai, comfortably settled, ignored him. Todor instead dropped himself into the seat to Foo Hai’s right with the wraith Petia drifting over like the Grim Reaper to join him.

Jeremy moved to center stage. “Genetics is the wave of the future, and the nation that controls human genetics controls the future. In a process that so far only works with the X chromosome, thereby excluding genetic modification of males, I have developed the first generation of superwomen.” He beamed and rocked on his heels, proud of his little opener, then he blabbered on a bit about Aldrich Peters’ original process of genetic modification of embryos. “Of course, Peters never perfected the process. His first efforts suffered unfortunate imbalances and other side effects. The addition of my techniques corrected the problems beautifully, as you are about to witness. With Peters dead, I am now the only one who knows this complicated process. Enjoy.” Jeremy started a DVD.

Lindsey recognized the first girl to appear on the screen as Lena. She was hiding behind a wooden structure, peering around the corner across what appeared to be a courtyard. She took a quick look behind her, which made it very obvious that she was, indeed, hiding from someone, and that perhaps she didn’t know she was being taped. Across the courtyard, perhaps a hundred feet away, a wrought-iron gate stood partway open, except that it was blocked on Lena’s side by a small, two-door Opel. To get through the gate a person would have to climb over the car’s roof.

A man appeared who was walking close to the wall carrying an Uzi. He passed the car and kept walking and Lindsey had the impression he was a guard on duty. Lena shook her shoulders and shook out her hands. For several moments she seemed to be waiting, and then she bolted from behind her hiding place and raced for the gate. It had to be as obvious to everyone else as it was to Lindsey that Lena was going to scramble across the roof of the car to freedom.

When she reached the car she did not attempt to climb onto the roof. She grabbed the front bumper with both hands and shoved the Opel backward at least six feet.

Lindsey gasped and she heard several others respond similarly. The boy psychic, Yegor, said something that sounded like “Oh bald it,” but which she took to be an expression like wow or cool. Lena Poole was only fifteen years old, slender, and probably not much more than five and a half feet tall, yet she had lifted and pushed the Opel with the strain Lindsey might have put into moving a card table.

Lena dropped the car’s front end and raced through the gate only to stop suddenly, fall to the ground and convulse, obviously hit by a Taser before she could make good on her escape.

An electrical pulse charged across Lindsey’s shoulders, a sympathetic physical response generated by her mind. She shivered, and felt her neck growing hot with rage. She pasted a smile on her face as the video continued.

Jeremy spoke up. “I show this next video so you can see the wide range of special powers you could produce in these genetically enhanced women.”

The setting this time was indoors. A girl sat in a chair looking quite comfortable, not at all alarmed. Lindsey struggled to recognize her. She knew the face

. Then it came to her. This was Dawn O’Shaughnessy, one of Rainy’s egg babies and one of a set of triplets. Dawn was at least twenty-four now. Lindsey knew little else about her. She must have been fourteen or fifteen when the video was made. She picked up a knife with a vicious, 7-inch, serrated bladea KA-BARand slashed a deep cut on her forearm from the elbow to almost the wrist.

Blood rushed onto Dawn’s skin and the table and Lindsey again heard gasps, a particularly loud one of dismay from Zuza. And then a total hush fell as before their eyes, the girl swiped a white towel across her arm to remove the blood and then watched the wound’s edges begin to seal together. Or grow back together. Or

Lindsey wasn’t sure exactly what she was seeing, only that the bleeding stopped almost immediately and the wound closed.

“Is the time real?” asked the Asian psychic with the big black mole on his face.

“I assure you all that what you are seeing is real and in real time.”

Lindsey could imagine how all these villains must be salivating, their minds now creating useful possibilities that would earn them money and power.

Suddenly they were back in the original courtyard, but this time the girl who was hiding, obviously thinking she might escape through that open gate, was Teal. When the guard passed by the car, Teal waited as Lena had done, and then she, too, dashed for what she thought might be freedom. But the speed at which she crossed the courtyard was so fast that Lindsey leaned forward as if to see closer. Teal easily leaped from the ground to the roof of the car and then to the ground on the other side.

But she, too, did not make her escape and was brought down by a Taser.

“That completes our demonstration,” Jeremy said. His slick-looking henchman turned off the TV monitor as Jeremy stepped in front of it. “Sixteen more such genetic marvels exist, all between the ages of five and seventeen. They could be your broodmares,’ so to speak, for ever more fantastic combinations.”

Sixteen! Lindsey’s heart stopped. There were sixteen girls? God in heaven. Would Jeremy kidnap and sell them all?

“These disks contain all the information you need to claim these amazing girls and begin your own program of alteration,” Jeremy blathered on. Lindsey drew in a deep breath as she yanked her reeling thoughts sharply into focus.

“Two disks offer five girls and the third disk offers six. Included in the purchase is the information needed to do the genetic procedures that will allow you to produce your own modified lines of superwomen using their already enhanced egg cells. Take that into consideration as you draw up your bids.”

Sixteen girls. Samantha and Christine needed to know this immediately. This monster had apparently used the women in the fertility clinics, replaced their own ova with genetically modified eggs, and was now offering the girls for sale, some as young as five years old!

“When you purchase,” Jeremy continued, “you may be assured that only you and I will possess this virtually priceless information, and I guarantee I will not sell it to others.”

She didn’t believe that he wouldn’t try to sell again. She doubted that the others would believe him, either. They would, however, want to possess any information their competitors might acquire and be the first to have it. And she absolutely believed Jeremy possessed exactly what he was claiming. She knew all about Lab 33 and the extraordinary truth of the egg babies, but the others were demanding proof.

“Videos can easily be faked,” Galina scoffed.

“This better not be all you’ve got here,” Yun nearly shouted. He was skeptical but clearly excited at the prospect.

“Of course not.” Jeremy’s tone was a purr. “I give you Teal.”

The servant’s door opened. Slick Hair, holding her arm, escorted the seventeen-year-old into the room. Meekly, Teal stepped into the acrylic cell and sat in the chair as the entry port slid shut behind her.

Chapter 25

T eal looked angelic as she sat in the awful acrylic cubicle, head lowered a bit, eyes downcast so that her full black lashes fanned out prettily. Her lovely high cheek and brow bones caught the light, but her pallor enhanced the ethereal quality of her presence. Her long, blond-streaked chestnut hair was no longer pulled into the saucy ponytail she usually wore, but hung straight down behind her. She was dressed in the jeans and top she’d worn when she was captured, now dirty.

The urge to reach out to Teal threatened to overpower Lindsey. Whatever it takes, sweetheart, we’ll get you out of here.

Teal slowly looked up and surveyed the crowd, stopping momentarily to look at Lindsey and Zuza. Lindsey longed to smile and wave the Athena wave at her, but she steeled herself, keeping her face impassive.

Jeremy harrumphed. “Not only does Teal possess astounding speed, she is able to sense, when close-up, aspects of mood, emotion, personality and life events of nearly all individuals. With the assistance of the psychically talented aides you have with you, we will now perform a demonstration. I will give you time to think of an image. Any image you wish. You will draw that image. On the same paper you will also write out a description of your image. I will show these to Teal. She will immediately transmit the image to your assistant.”

Jeremy hadn’t mentioned Teal’s ability to transmit images and feelings at great distances. Maybe Jeremy didn’t know about that.

As Jeremy watched, Slick Hair passed a pad and pencil to Galina, Yun, Todor, Foo and Lindsey.

“Do I have to make it simple?” Todor asked.

“I can’t draw,” Galina protested.

Foo, Lindsey noted, remained silent and impassive. The longer she was in the room with him, the less she liked him and the more intimidating he seemed.

Jeremy shook his head. “You may make it as complex as you wish, Mr. Todor. The girl can convey to any receptive mind the finest of image details along with feelings. Imagine the potential of another generation bred by enhancement of her eggs,” he continued. “Her daughters would be able to transmit in secret, undetected by any communications satellite, the most specific information you might wish to send or receive.” He turned and smiled kindly at Galina. “Your drawing need not be accurate or beautiful. Use stick figures if you wish. But I encourage you to include at least one very specific item.

“Naturally, you must not reveal this image to your telepathic accompliceswhich would defeat the purpose, of course. I ask that, for the time it takes you to compose your drawings, that they be excused from the room.” Again, the smug, self-pleased expression, as though he were as clever as a stand-up comic.

This man was intensely irritating, but he was right in that Lindsey must choose her image with extreme care. Brows, who moved away from the corner where he had been standing with arms crossed, signaled, and all of the psychics followed him out of the room.

Lindsey scoured her mind for the perfect image. “Can we include words?” she asked.

“Only if they are part of an object. The girl cannot convey sentences, per se, only images she sees and feelings.”

So. Not words. The perfect image popped into Lindsey’s mind’s eye, a way to let Teal know that Lindsey was here and on her side. Teal’s core group at the academy was named the Penthas, after the queen of the Amazon warriors at Troy, Penthesilea. The Penthas’ logo was a woman riding bareback on a horse and wearing a quiver of arrows, her arms spread outward. The pose had reminded Lindsey of the classic scene of the boy riding on the beach in the old movie, Black Stallion. Since Jeremy knew about the AthenaAcademy only too well, Lindsey sketched a damn good image but omitted the arrows. The written image message she handed him: A woman on horseback, arms stretched upward and outward.

When all the sketches and written descriptions were complete, Jeremy collected them and, to Lindsey’s dismay, he put all of them into one copper bowl and mixed them together. It looked as though Jeremy would hand the slips to Teal at random. The girl would have no way of knowing who had sketched the Pentha logo. The psychics returned to the room and their seats.

Jeremy drew one of the slips of paper and passed it to Pietro, who pressed buttons on the acrylic cage and handed the note to Teal. She read it and closed her eyes. Almost immediately, the five psychics in the room began writing. When they stopped, each was asked in turn to read what they’d “seen.”

Yun read what his petite Korean psychic had written: “An ancient Western god, half man and half goat. Very clear image.”

Galina, the Russian woman, read what the boy had written: “The Greek Pan, very recognizable. A symbol that the gods were experimenters. They combined unlike life forms.” Galina smiled, nodding enthusiastically.

Jeremy gestured to Foo Hai, who clearly didn’t want to speak. Bing read his own words aloud. “The ancient fertility god of horn and cloven hoof and later prototype for the Western Satan, chosen, perhaps, as an image of new fertility in genetically altered beings. The clear image carries a sense of ideas, as well.”

Whoa! Lindsey looked at Bing and back at Teal. This was astonishing. A sense of ideas embedded in the image? What would they make of her own image? Teal had sent so much more than just the simple image of Pan. The drawer’s own thought processes, clearly Galina’s, seemed to accompany the image. This was frightening. What if Teal inadvertently revealed Lindsey’s true persona?

It was Petia’s turn. Todor read Petia’s written impression. “An image based on ancient superstitions. The goat man.”

Zuza read hers last. “The god Pan. Fertility. Mixing life forms.”

Lindsey felt relief that Zuza’s reading echoed the others’. She’d actually been a bit nervous ever since Zuza had suggested that Lindsey and Marko were lovers.

Jeremy passed around the original image message Galina had written, simply saying, “The ancient Greek god of fertility, Pan, half goat, half man.” Then he said, “Teal apparently sent more than Galina’s words. Is the idea of weaving modern fertility and genetics into the ancient image an accurate reflection of your thoughts?” he asked Galina.

“Quite,” she replied.

Jeremy went on and on, but even without his used-car-salesman gushiness, the readings were genuine, and Teal had done her job beautifully. And she was holding up well. Clear-eyed and with erect posture, the girl was made of strong stuff.

The next symbol was generated by Yun. All five psychics saw the red star in a circle and identified it as a flag. Bing and Zuza recognized it as North Korean and felt intense patriotism attached to it.

Todor’s image was of an instrument of torture, the iron maiden, which Bing pointed out was actually a hoax in Nuremberg. But the psychics all saw the casketlike device, lined inside with spikes, the head of a woman carved at the top. If the psychics understood that the image was chosen because Todor relished the use of torture, they kept it to themselves. It didn’t require telepathy to know that that was true.

Foo Hai’s image was of a dragon eating a spider. Yegor said, “The spider has long hairy legs that have hooks in the ends that dig into flesh.” The way the psychics described the spider, it took all of Lindsey’s self-control to keep from shuddering.

She hadn’t imagined that the selection of an image would reveal so much about the person who chose it. Her simple horse and rider was last, and even as they listened, everyone would know the image was Lindsey’s because everyone else had admitted the authenticity of the previous images. Would the psychics expose her? The urge to fidget set her foot to trotting in place, but she stopped it before anyone noticed.

Yun read Haneul’s response to Teal’s impressions of the horse and woman: “A woman is riding a black horse. Arms reaching outward. She is proud.”

Lindsey hadn’t said anything about the horse being black, but, of course, that’s what she’d drawn.

Galina read Yegor’s impressions. “I think a Native American woman is riding a horse. I see arrows rising from something strapped onto the woman. She will not hesitate to use them if threatened. She may be reaching for her weapon.”

Thank you, Yegor, thank you.

Yegor jerked his head toward her, staring.

Yikes! Was he reading her mind?

Bing began reading what he’d written. “A woman of ancient times is riding on a horse. She believes in her cause, reaches across time, and inspires modern women. Her outward reach is symbolic of magnificence and power and the desire to change things or defend something. She may even be military.”

This man was scary. He’d picked up not only Lindsey’s thinking, but perhaps Teal’s own emotional response to the image. Lindsey held herself rigid to keep from betraying her response to how dead-on this was.

Petia scowled as Todor read her impressions in an impatient voice: “A woman on horseback who believes men will let her have power.”

Zuza spoke up immediately with her response. “A woman rides a black horse. She is fierce. She will do anything to succeed.”

Lindsey allowed herself to take a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was clear that to a certain extent, the psychics put their own emotional spin on impressions. Maybe this fact would hide her true motives.

Todor spoke up. “How do we know the accuracy of these messages is because of this girl? Maybe it is more because of the gifted people we bring with us? This does not yet convince me.”

“The psychics themselves have expressed the unusual clarity of the messages the girl sends,” Jeremy said. “But she can also read’ people well.”

“Show us,” Galina said.

Jeremy agreed.

“I don’t trust your cage,” Lindsey said. “Who knows what microphones and speakers the girl could be listening to in there? I know how supposed psychics perform. Take her out of the box!”

She’d started a minor rebellion, with everyone sharing her demand, and again, Jeremy consented. He and Pietro brought Teal out. Pietro stood between her and the bidders, who were to approach one at a time.

“She will tell you something about yourself that she could not otherwise know,” Jeremy said.

Galina barged forward in order to go first, and Teal said to her, “You are writing a book you hope will be sold in the West and bring you money.”

Galina stiffened, opened her mouth to speak, closed it, nodded and sat down.

“Who doesn’t want to write a book and make money?” Todor said. “That could be a lucky guess. Try me.” He stepped forward. “I bet you tell me I survived a bomb blast. Hah! Who can’t see that?” Sweat dripped off the end of his nose.

“You also have scars on your back where your father, uncle and grandfather beat you harshly,” Teal said.

For a moment, he kept his mouth shut, as if caught off guard, but then he frowned. “Could be another lucky guess. Eastern Europeans all got big families who beat the kids.” He sat down.

Foo Hai stepped forward, and Teal studied him a moment. “You barely survived your childhood in an orphanage and managed to hide a tiny item, which is the only thing you have that belonged to your original family.” Teal let her gaze wander over the man’s face and hands. “The item is green. A frog. Stone. Maybe jade.”

Foo Hai returned to his seat, giving no hint whether what she’d said was true or not. It was Lindsey’s turn. As she approached Teal, she ached to grasp her tightly in a hug and then turn and flee with her. Could Teal see that? What would the girl reveal in front of all these bloody people?

“You aren’t like the others,” Teal said, loud enough for all to hear.

Chapter 26

J eremy glared at Lindsey. Slick Hair also straightened and stared at her, as did Foo Hai and Todor, all watching with eyes narrowed. Please don’t expose me, Lindsey thought, willing her words to leap the space between her head and Teal’s. With no other way of warning Teal, Lindsey stepped closer to Teal so that her back was now to all others watching except Jeremy, who stood to her extreme right. The potential for exposure was perilously high. Teal might have recognized the Pentha logo, but maybe not. Maybe she would know that Lindsey was from the Academy. Maybe not. Lindsey risked it. She winked at Teal with her left eye, praying that the bridge of her nose would hide the movement from Jeremy.

Teal frowned. Then she closed her eyes a moment, then opened them and “read” Lindsey. “You come from a wealthy family, but you still want more. Others here have some kind of vision, even though it may be cruel or desperate. A huge desire for revenge, some weird loyalty, or a cause. You don’t have any vision or cause. You love only money. Your heart is truly cold.”

“Well, you’re a nasty little bitch,” Lindsey said. She turned abruptly, feigning anger, but inwardly cheering.

Everyone still watched her, frowns suggesting speculation. Had they bought it?

Teal had to have recognized Lindsey’s true intentions, and, knowing them, helped hide them beautifully. But was she really acting? If only Lindsey could get a clear message to the girl that help was on the way.

She found the final two readings rather prosaic. Soon Jeremy had summed up the demonstration and seemed about ready to dismiss Teal when Foo Hai spoke for the first time all evening.

“This is not enough,” he said in fluent, British-accented English. “You want millions from your highest bidder for this girl and the disks. The demonstration may be real or it may be a con. You say you have combined several enhanced abilities in her, but where is the proof? A demonstration of speed on TV? The Russian woman pointed out that videos are easily faked. It seems you have wasted our time, and people who waste our time

” He stopped to make sure Jeremy was paying attention. “

always regret it.”

Jeremy paled. “We have other potentially very high bidders here tonight.” He looked pointedly at Lindsey, then at Galina, and back to Foo Hai. “They aren’t complaining. You are free to leave.”

Todor said, “I also say show us more.”

This was the moment to push for more information out of Jeremy. “You say you have sixteen other girls. Why are you showing us only one? Where are the others?”

Unanimously, the bidders all joined in demanding the answer.

“Where are they? In the U.S.? Would we have to kidnap them ourselves?”

Jeremy raised a hand to calm the furor. “Most do live in the United States. They do not live under high security. The disks you purchase will provide their names and locations. They live in suburban homes.” He put a different DVD into the television. “I’ll give a quick overview.”

A series of pictures of girls four or five years old was shown on the screen. The faces and complexions were very different, yet there was something about them that made them seem related. All bright-eyed. Glossy-haired. Perfect teeth. Perfect features, perfectly proportioned.

“Average IQ of this group is 184,” Jeremy said. “All are now older and look much different, of course. Their test copies are on the disks.” He looked at Lindsey. “Imagine what wealthy people would pay to make sure their child not only had no birth defects, but was genetically enhanced in some manner to make them superior to all their peers.”

Foo Hai looked at Lindsey, studying her openly, the first time he’d allowed himself to give even the impression that he was taking in everything he saw and heard.

Jeremy spoke to Galina, Todor and Yun. “Imagine what your intel ops and special forces could do if composed of such superwomen. And then using Lab 33 methods, imagine their progeny.”

Foo Hai said, “I don’t bid on this girl as also having the genes for great speed unless I see it myself. No video will be accepted.”

“Let’s see a live demonstration of the girl running,” Todor said, and Lindsey joined Yun and Galina in repeating the demand. The more time she could spend with Teal, the more time she spent seeing the buildings and its grounds, the better.

Jeremy’s protests were all based on logistics: ice, snow and cold, but eventually they all bundled up and went outside into the bitter chill of the night air. All the bidders were marched blindfolded toward some unknown destination. Lindsey longed to risk a peek at the exterior of the building, but heard the boots of someone move in close behind her.

From just ahead, she recognized the voice of Bing, muttering that the whole thing was “quite draconian.”

“Shut up,” Foo Hai said.

Lindsey caught a whiff, just behind her, of the stale cigarette smell of Slick Hair. A muffled metallic click and a sixth sense told her that he had a gun pointed at herwhich, of course, no one could see blindfolded. Lindsey shivered. Zuza moved closer as they walked. Judging by the footfalls, it didn’t sound as if any of the other bidders were followed closely by any of Jeremy’s people. This might mean he thought she, of all the others, might try something. So, maybe they did suspect she was an agent. How she wished that Marko had somehow managed to follow her in spite of the GPS jamming.

The crunch of boots on gravel finally gave way to pavement, and they angled downhill around a bend until they’d reached a level area. Jeremy’s place apparently sat on a low hill near flat land.

“You may now remove your blindfolds,” Jeremy said and met no resistance.

Five vehicles faced the road at intervals between barren trees, motors running, headlights on, lighting the road for Teal. She wore a heavy sweatshirt much too large for her, and she was stretching and doing jumping jacks.

“She hasn’t eaten much for the last few days

because of the flu,” Jeremy said.

Teal stopped her motion and frowned at him but said nothing about being deliberately starved.

Lindsey subtly scanned her surroundings and the night sky. A dim glow on the horizon in the east suggested the ambient light from either a small town not too far away or perhaps from Prague some thirty minutes or so away. She also spotted Polaris and calculated that if Jeremy’s place followed the curve of the road, it faced essentially south or southeast. The bark on the massive trees that lined both sides of the road looked smooth and almost silvery in this light, naked limbs glistening with ice.

When Todor shouted and all heads turned his direction, Lindsey stepped away from her position, snapped off a few twigs from the nearest branch and dropped them into her pocket. To cover her moves, she pulled a tissue from the same pocket and faked a sneeze, hoping that it would seem as though she’d stepped away out of politeness. Nevertheless, she saw good old Mr. Bushy Brows watching her from inside one of the cars.

A gunshot fired and Lindsey ducked.

Immediately, she felt stupid. The shot simply marked the beginning of Teal’s run. Amazingly, the girl seemed turbo-charged. Her wide strides were more like leaps, as the demo tape had shown, yet her legs moved so fast, the devil seemed right behind her. And probably was. As soon as a man in a suit clocked her, she slowed down, blocked at the end of the run by two more of Jeremy’s henchmen. It was now obvious that Jeremy’s operation wasn’t simply Bushy Brows, Jeremy and Slick Hair.

Drivers, also in suits, sat in each of the five cars. And at least one of Jeremy’s men escorted the bidder in each car, that was five, and the five drivers would also have to be his men or they couldn’t be trusted with the location. So Jeremy had at least ten men.

Teal was jogging now back toward Jeremy when she stumbled and fell onto one knee, as if dizzy. Doubtless she was faint from lack of food. Lindsey rushed to her, bent over and whispered, “Athena” as she pulled Teal up by the arm. Then she turned away, and said loudly, “She does run like the wind. I’d hate to see her hurt herself.”

Lindsey had seen the light of hope in the girl’s eyes, as if she’d glimpsed the cavalry riding toward the fort. Please, please, let it be so.

“This concludes our presentation,” Jeremy said. He passed around printouts of minimum bids next to blank spaces for the bidder’s offer. “Call the number on your printout with your bid by 10:00 a.m. You will be contacted by noon tomorrow if it has been accepted. Good evening.”

Slick Hair hurried over, handing blindfolds to Foo Hai and Bing.

Just before Brows appeared, fumbling as he slipped the blindfold on Lindsey and Zuza again, Lindsey noticed that the bidding for each of the three disks started at ten million dollars. For Teal, listed as “Enhanced Live Female,” the bid started at fifteen million.

Chapter 27

B lindfolded again, Lindsey decided the return drive to Prague was taking longer than the drive out. Brows had to be taking a different route. The car never picked up much speed, so they must not be traveling on throughways, just back roads and side streets, making it impossible to calculate their direction. She had no idea how she could find Jeremy’s place again, only that she must.

Teal had to be recovered as fast as possible. Preferably in darkness, just before the light of dawn. And definitely before noon tomorrow when Jeremy would receive the bids and decide the winner. There would be no way to predict how soon after his decision Jeremy might hand the girl over to someone else if Lindsey’s bid was topped. That meant 5:00 a.m. at the latest. Sam would be arriving soon, and Tito with an extraction team. But how to figure out the location for the raid?

She concentrated on putting together the clues of the locale, but what kept popping into her mind was the half-cleaned mural. At first she fought the interruption, but each time the image of the mural returned, she remembered something new. Maybe it was important. She’d loved how the revelers under the tree in the painting represented humanity: a mother nursing a baby, half-naked children, maidens with flower wreaths in their hair, a monk, matrons in shawls that covered their heads, men in nationalistic costume, old people smiling in contentment. All dramatically lit. Definitely not Renaissance or Baroque. Something almost modern about it. The goddess dimly visible in the treeher headdress so distinctive. Something was trying to work its way to Lindsey’s conscious mind.

She bit her lip, frustrated and angry as the car continued its slow progression. Tripping out on the mural just wasted time. If she had a few days, she could do some detective work and figure out the artist and then learn where this particular fresco had been painted. But they didn’t have that luxury. They had until dawn. At least she had the tree twigs. Maybe that would lead to something.

What had Zuza said? A tree will be important in solving this.

Maybe Zuza was right. Lindsey couldn’t wait to tell Sam and Marko

Marko! Dear God, he must be frantic. A new sense of urgency pushed her. Aren’t we there yet? she wanted to yell at Brows. Almost as if in response to her anger, she was thrown against the left rear door as the limo made a sharp turn. She’d barely righted herself when she was thrown against Zuza, who leaned to the right as they made what seemed almost a one-eighty turn. Then another turn and another. Then she heard the hollow, ringing roar of crossing a bridge.

She guessed they were crossing The Vltava River again. Several minutes later, Brows told her to remove her blindfold, and the limousine pulled up near a taxi stand, a different location than where they’d been picked up. They were just outside Old Town Square

. The teenage boy stood there. He climbed in the front and tossed the purses to Brows. Brows all but threw the purses at her and Zuza and then shoved the two of them out the door. The driver sped off, tires screeching.

Other black cars flew by, heading south, the ones she’d seen at Teal’s running demo. So, the other bidders had been let off somewhere nearby, as well. She and Zuza walked toward the line of taxis at the beautifully lit old square, still alive with milling people at 11:30 on a cold Friday night. Even at this distance, the ice sculptures glistenedpristine and beautiful.

“Wait a sec,” she said to Zuza. She stepped back into an arched doorway, took out her cell phone, used a coin to open the back, and looked for bugs. She didn’t find anything suspicious but decided not to risk a call to Marko at the safe house, just in case she’d missed something.

Zuza tugged her sleeve and gestured with her head to a black car that pulled up on the opposite side of the street beneath a streetlight. Its windows were tinted; Lindsey couldn’t see faces inside, yet she was certain she caught the glint of gold on the driver’s neck in the distinctive shape of Foo Hai’s calligraphy pendant.

Not good! Lindsey thought as Zuza said, “We must hurry.”

They bounded out of the doorway into a walk that was closer to a run, passing two of the dazzling ice sculptures before reaching the line of taxis. Lindsey gave the cabbie an address five doors down from the tobacco shop. Yesterday her taxi had proceeded southwest to reach the safe house. The man sped off, turned south but then east.

Panic welled. What the hell was he doing? He turned north on a one-way street, jabbering something in Czech. Zuza answered him, then translated. “He says the Ice Festival brings many tourists and traffic, so we are taking back roads. They say this all the time, but tonight, I think it is true.”

He jabbered some more and Zuza added, “He says someone is following us.”

Lindsey heard a loud popping and zings off the cab. Gunfire!

She and Zuza scrunched down. The rear of the car dropped and the sickening bounce of flat tires began. The cabbie pulled over and then another shot hit him. He called out and slumped over.

“Zuza! Get out! Duck and run toward that alley!”

Zuza leaped out and Lindsey followed her, bullets flying around them, the sound of their boots crunching in the snow. God, the poor cabbie. Her terror inched a notch higher when it looked like the narrow alley was a dead end with solid brick walls on either side. Second stories overhung the ground level. The only light came from two windows above in an alley so narrow people could almost shake hands with their neighbors from their upstairs windows.

Lindsey raced in front of Zuza. They ran in the shadow of the overhangs, hugging the walls, passing a couple of doors bolted shut, knocking down trash cans.

Lindsey glanced over her shoulder. Limned by the distant streetlights, dark shapes barreled toward them, one taller than the others. At least three. Maybe fifty feet away.

From behind Lindsey, Zuza called frantically, “Up ahead. Go left.”

Two more shots zinged by as Zuza caught up and pulled Lindsey into a pedestrian passageway. They dashed into it.

The passageway took them back to the street. Zuza gasped and panted. The frigid night air sawed at Lindsey’s windpipe. Slowed by their coats and boots, they wove through parked and passing cars as they dashed across the narrow street, not daring to ask for help. Anyone who stopped might also be shot. Lindsey didn’t even dare to stop running long enough to pull out her cell phone.

“We hide in the old Jewish cemetery,” Zuza called between great gulps of air. “I know a way in and a place they can’t find us.” She pointed toward an even less well-lit street and Lindsey led them. She didn’t hear anything, but a glance behind revealed three shadows darting in and out of street-lamp glows, keeping pace. She could make them out clearly as a half-moon now stood high in the sky.

She and Zuza reached a walled-in park, only a tangle of barren treetops and a few evergreens visible from the street. They ran alongside a wall higher than their heads, past antiquated buildings and then they turned a corner, now running parallel to the river. Just ahead a snow-thickened branch hung down over the wall.

“Here,” Zuza said. She grabbed the branch, scrambled up the wall, straddled the top and stretched her hand down to help Lindsey.

As Lindsey hoisted herself over the top, shots rang out again. Zuza screamed. Lindsey crashed onto the snow on the inside of the wall and caught Zuza as Zuza rolled down from the top.

Zuza’s coat had a horrible smoking hole in it. Breathing hard, her hands shaking, Lindsey pulled off one glove and opened the coat. In the freezing darkness, Zuza’s blood looked like black oil as it flowed out of a hole, a wide exit wound on the right side of her chest near her collarbone.

Chapter 28

T he top-hatted coachman halted the two horses at exactly fifteen minutes before midnight, right on schedule. From the horses’ nostrils, exhaled breath created a gray cloud that rose in the late night air. The tour guide, robed in a hooded, monklike gown, launched into the crescendo of his Midnight Tour of Haunted Prague, speaking to the six black-clad tourists in his carriage.

“We have entered Josefov, possibly the most haunted of all places in Prague, the old Jewish quarter, actually the result of a pogrom throughout much of Prague’s often tragic history. Be alert to the shade of Franz Kafka, who restlessly and angrily seeks out his former loyal friend and fellow artist through these streets. After all, the friend had the audacity not to destroy Kafka’s work upon his death as promised. Now look what Kafka must endurelasting fame. Those who have seen him say he’s furious.”

The guide did not tell them that in fact Kafka was buried elsewhere, in the New Jewish Cemetery, and the passengers commented and kidded about seeing Kafka just there or over there as they climbed down from the carriage. They followed the guide toward the side of the Pinkas Synagogue to “the cemetery, which was established in the fifteenth century.”

Oddly, the tour guide thought he’d seen three or even four figures dressed in black scurry away at the end of the wall. The sight made his hackles rise. Had any of his customers noticed? He could swear that at least one of the dark wraiths had a mustache and thin goatee. The spirit of Flash Gordon’s villain, the evil Ming? At least the figures seemed to be leaving.

He shook off the eerie feeling. Of course they had been men, not ghosts. They had to be. “Tonight,” the guide intoned in his spookiest voice as he unlocked the iron gate, “on this special tour, we are going to experience something few people ever have seena haunted graveyard at midnight. This old Jewish cemetery has bodies buried as many as twelve layers deep, perhaps more than a hundred thousand restless spirits here.”

The customers had grown quiet. The joking stopped as they moved down a central walkway. Moonlight and his lone flashlight shone on the stunningly eerie sight of a jumble of tombstones crowded together, most leaning or tilting like broken teeth, as if about to fall.

One of the tourists said, “Looks like the dead are pushing the ground up, trying to get out.”

Other tourists shuddered.

Pointing with the beam of his flashlight, the guide said, “Rabbi Loew is buried here. The creator of the most famous of the Golem stories of the clay giant who came to life and killed those who persecuted”

The guide stopped panning. The flashlight’s beam returned to where it had been a fraction of a second earlier. Behind a bed-shaped tomb stood two women, one with blood all over her chest, leaning against the other whose hands were bloody.

Three tourists screamed.

Another said, “You chaps do stage the most delightfully bizarre things.”

The guide couldn’t seem to get his mouth closed or find his voice.

“Please help us,” the pale pretty woman said.

Lindsey had thanked the good people in the carriage for taking Zuza and her to the nearest emergency care unit, which, as it turned out, was only a few blocks from the cemetery. The tour guide also called in seeking help for the cabbie, but he’d already been picked up. He’d been hit at the base of his skull, and Lindsey dreaded hearing about his condition. Killed or maimed for life because he’d stopped to pick her up. Unbearable. And Zuza had lost consciousness, in dire condition, as well, also because of helping Lindsey. She left Zuza in the care of the doctors, found a pay phone in the hallway, and dialed the safe house.

Marko hadn’t returned.

Dread shot through her. She remained jittery, wired to the max. The whole demonstration with Jeremy, then the adrenaline racing through her veins during the chase, Zuza’s getting shot, followed by their discovery in the graveyard by what had at first seemed to Lindsey like some posse from the Inquisition. She slumped against the wall by the phone. Bendrich explained that she had messages from a Sam and a Tito. Both had experienced delays and weren’t sure when they’d arrive. Lindsey hung up and sank into a chair in the waiting area. Her brain boiled, hyper as an MTV clip. No Samantha! Even worse, maybe no Tito! Seriously bad news. They needed to get Teal out before morning. Somehow Lindsey had to make it happen. And where in God’s name was Marko?

An adrenaline letdown nearly overpowered her. She suddenly longed to curl up into a ball in her hotel room with the thermostat set to ninety. She felt completely alone

as Teal must have been feeling for days now. The girl’s heroic instincts in not escaping when she had the chance were now endangering the lives of so many. And yet, they’d never have known about the sixteen other girls if not for brave, foolish Teal. There was such evil in what Jeremy and the bidders were doing. Those bidders

Foo Hai. At least one of her attackers had worn a calligraphy pendant like Foo Hai’s. Why had they tried to kill her and Zuza?

Marko, I need you. Where are you?

Was he okay? Rats. It sure didn’t help her focus to be worrying about him. After he’d lost contact with her, he probably decided there was no point in waiting around.

“Ha!” she said aloud. Some watchdog. Some help if he’d drifted off somewhere.

But what if something bad had happened to him? Annoying man. She didn’t need the drag of having to watch out for anyone else, thank you very much, K-bar.

She looked up to see an elderly woman and younger man sitting together across from her chair, staring at her. Lindsey nodded; gravely, they nodded back.

Ah, her fatigue had been talking to her. She shook her head and pictured Marko following her out there in the middle of who knew where, not speaking the language

Marko was valiantly trying to help, and if he was in trouble, she needed to get on it immediately. She sat up and sucked in a deep breath. Only something pretty serious would keep Marko from calling in, she decided. If something had really happened to him

She thought of the looks that came over his handsome face when she was around him, a look of fascination intensely focused on her, of fun, of patience, of heroic willingness to help. Okay, she had to try to find him. It was 12:36. Get it together and

“Lindsey?”

Marko was striding toward her. She flew at him. Their mouths locked together upon contact, arms clamping each other through heavy coats, his colder than hers. His lips warmed quickly next to hers. Applause sounded behind her.

Lindsey broke away and turned to see the old lady smiling gently and clapping. Lindsey waved back.

“I was sick that I’d lost you,” Marko said.

Lindsey explained about Jeremy’s interference device. “And, when I thought something had happened to you, Marko, I

” Uh-oh, she was turning sappy. She cleared her throat. “I knew how much I’d hate to lose a guy so good at first aid.”

He grinned. “I only kept the damn Rolly on because I knew K-bar would hunt me down and carve me up if I lost you.”

She made a face.

His expression went serious. “I never gave up, Linds, and when the signal finally came on again, well, I don’t know where I was, but I followed it until it led me here.”

Her throat tightened with all the feelings that stirred inside her, feelings they didn’t have time for. She grabbed Marko’s arm and headed for the exit. “Do you still have the car?”

“Barely. It works, though.”

Barely? She knew at once that a bad story lay behind that one word. But not now. Time for his story later. “Then let’s go.”

Chapter 29

A t the sight of a jagged hole in the rear windshield of Marko’s rented car, Lindsey halted midstride; she really might have lost Marko. The spare tire, one of those small temporaries, looked pitiful.

“I froze my culo changing the tires,” Marko explained. “The other rear tire I patched from a small emergency kit in the trunk. It’s so cold, I doubt that the adhesive will stick much longer. Could blow anytime.”

Lindsey climbed into the passenger’s seat and they headed for the safe house. “Who did this, Marko?”

“Well, I know they looked Asian.”

“Two of the bidding teams are Asian. One is, I think, North Korean and the other is

well, I don’t know who they represent, but the bidder is one scary beast. I’d say Chinese.”

Marko made a turn. “I fired back,” he continued, “and they took off. I don’t think they expected me to be armed. And Linds, there was a chopper flying around and a car with someone who looked Eastern European, possibly a local. My gut says we were all looking for the same thing.”

“These people are clearly dead set on getting their hands on that poor girl. I guess they’ll do anything. I’m virtually certain that the men who attacked Zuza and me were with the man who calls himself Foo Hai. He probably led the attack.”

“Perhaps he was helping to take out someone he thought might outbid him.”

“That’s been my guess, too. And I have more bad news.”

Marko looked at her quickly, then back to the street.

“There are sixteen more girls scheduled to be future kidnap victims.” She told Marko about the disks for sale that would provide the names and identities, locations and talents, of more exceptional girls like Teal.

When she’d filled him in on everything that happened at the demonstration, Marko said, “This just blows my mind. The science itself, and that these people want to become gods and don’t give l’oca who gets hurt.”

“Goddess, in the case of the Russian woman.” Lindsey instantly thought again of the goddess in the painting, totally unlike Galina. The figure in the mural was a friendly, beautiful goddess. Wait a minute

” 1920s. Art nouveau. Alphonse Mucha!”

“Huh?”

“It’s a Mucha! The mural in the room was painted by Alphonse Mucha. I’m sure of it. We might be able to figure out exactly where Jeremy’s place is! The goddess’s headdress was distinctive, but I couldn’t remember right then exactly why. It was in the style of art nouveauonly done realistically! I’d bet you’d recognize all the posters he did in Paris at the turn of the century up though the twenties. He practically invented art deco. But he also did more serious epic paintings and murals on commission that weren’t as well known.”

“I don’t see how this is so helpful.”

“Because if we can find a record of his commissioned works, we’ll be able to find Jeremy’s place.”

“You can put hands on this information in the middle of the night?”

Lindsey slouched. “I don’t know. It is our best lead, though. Oh, and I also have a twig from a tree lining the road near his place. An avenue of trees on both sides, all looking the same. I think we can go over satellite photos and maybe narrow things down.”

Marko turned the car into the street with the tobacco shop just as the car bumped drastically in the right rear. A flat. Lindsey and Marko both groaned. They were only about four blocks from the safe house, so they pulled over and walked, Marko carrying the Rolly unit. The bitter cold stung Lindsey’s face again as they hurried through the streets of Stare Mesto, Old Prague, now empty and quiet.

With time growing painfully short, Lindsey gulped black coffee and suppressed any urge to rest or sleep. People were hurt, maybe even dead. Monsters were on the move and Teal was still trapped among them. A long hot shower was what Lindsey craved above all creature comforts. Well, maybe even more, a hot shower with Marko. She settled for a change into her day clothing and another hit of coffee as she forced herself to plan for an extraction that had to happensomehow.

Sam was suddenly unreachable, so Lindsey called Christine and Allison. She reached Christine, who was stunned to learn about the sixteen other girls.

Bendrich, now awakened, joined them and entered clearance codes that allowed Marko to work on satellite image photo-reconnaissance data. A CIA feed from satellite recon in the Prague area was, fortunately, a piece of technology the safe house did have. Marko sat fully engrossed in front of a computer screen. Lindsey caught herself staring at him. She was deeply in trouble about Marko.

She made a rough sketch of the curved road leading to the flat stretch with the trees and the probable orientation of the building, and then asked Bendrich if it was possible he could find a forensic botanist, not entirely sure there was such a thing.

“Oh, yes indeed,” Bendrich said. “And she loves to be involved in big cases. She travels often, but if she is in Prague she’ll surely come. The room she rents is very close by.” He seemed pleased to have a specific task.

Allison called from Maryland where it was only a few minutes after 7:00 p.m. as opposed to just after 1:00 a.m. in Prague.

“Where’s Sam?” Lindsey forced her voice to sound calm.

“There’s a downpour of freezing rain in London that is slowing air traffic,” Allison said. “The plane will leave as soon as the storm dies down. She should be there in three hours or so on a chartered jet.”

“That means she won’t be here until after 4:00 a.m. at the earliest! For what I plan, we need the cover of darkness. And in my view, predawn would be the last possible good moment to stage this thing.”

“You know where Teal is held?”

“Well, no

not yet. But listen to this. You’d better sit down.” Lindsey told her about the sixteen other girls scheduled for “sale.”

“Dear God,” Allison breathed.

In the instant of silence, Lindsey heard the rapid clack of Marko’s fingers hitting computer keys, saw the flashes of light at his computer station as scenes changed on the screen. He was comparing day and night satellite images of the terrain around Prague.

Allison said, “No doubt all of the sixteen girls were born to mothers who looked to the Zuni Fertility Clinic for help. This is such awful news.”

Lindsey went on to describe the bidders and how Marko was attacked and her own attack that ended at the cemetery with Zuza critically wounded and the cabbie near death.

This also hit Allison hard. “There was no way to anticipate this, Lindsey. It’s a relief that your father sent this Marko Savin and that he’s helping.”

She thought of him getting lost and said nothing.

“So the North Koreans were there,” Allison continued. “Not unusual. The Russians, sad but not terribly surprising, and, of course, the good old Kestonians. The one who was excessively sweating

“

“Todor.”

“Something’s bothering me about this Todor and his condition. I’m going to do some checking. Also the Chinese bidder you mentioned is quite puzzling.”

“The only thing I know about that one is that he’s here with at least two other thugs in addition to his psychic and that he seems independent of any government. He wears a gold calligraphy pendant. I’m sorry I couldn’t memorize all of it, but I’ll send a partial sketch shortly.”

“Well, that would be a start. I’ll run it all through databases. And I absolutely agree that we need to move ASAP, not only to get Teal out but now to stop Jeremy’s potentially catastrophic little auction. You must get those disks, Lindsey. Even at great risk. You know that, right?”

This was Allison making clear that in the face of having sixteen more children in jeopardy, Lindsey might have to make some very, very hard choices as to who would live and who might die. “I fully understand, Allison. I will do what is required.”

Lindsey told Allison about her theory that the mural was painted by the famous Czech artist Alphonse Mucha and that she needed a record of his commissioned murals.

“I’ll get on it. Research is just my cup of tea. You work it from your end, too.”

“I will. Allison

” Lindsey spoke softly. “Teal is truly amazing. She was poised and performed beautifully in the psychic demonstrations. And her running ability is breathtaking. I’m certain she understood that an Athena woman was there. I wish you could have seen the hope flash in her eyes. I’m not going to let her down, but I’m really a novice at extractions.”

“I’ll send you a tactical ops brief. When you receive it, you can use it as a guide to plan as much of the extraction as you canthe approach, the weapons, positions, if possible. Have you ever worked on a tactical team mission before?”

“No, I’m sort of a lone cowgirl, but K-bar is putting together a tactical squad for emergencies with his personal security company and is continually adding more to the NSI arsenal of less-lethal weapons, so I’m familiar with the gear and some of the concepts. Marko probably is, as well. I can fire and do combat reloading of less-lethal as well as standard weapons, and I’m trained in weapons safety, use of green laser optic targeting

A mix of skills. The friend I said was on the way, his people are fully equipped with cutting-edge gadgets and are experts. If they can get here before it’s too late.”

“Do I need to remind you that Athena cannotmust notbe implicated in this? You can’t involve any local authorities who would demand answers to a lot of questions. Whatever happens, we don’t know you.”

Sheesh! How could Allison think Lindsey didn’t know this? “No reminders necessary.”

They rang off and she dialed Tito. “We’re about ready to take off,” he said. “The weather is not cooperating. We’ll arrive as soon as we can, Lindsey. I’ll keep you posted.”

Chapter 30

I n the safe house common work area, Lindsey watched Bendrich’s body language as he spoke on the phone to someone at the emergency care center. He kept nodding.

“Ano

Prosim?

Prosim k sluzbam

ano.”

Lindsey understood enough Czech by now to translate that last part perfectly. He’d essentially been saying, “Yes, Yes? Yes, and yes.”

Bendrich hung up the phone. “Zuza and the cabbie are stabilized with blood transfusions and have been sent to a larger hospital, Motol. Both alive. Zuza conscious. Cabbie unconscious. They are both scheduled for surgery.”

The elevator dinged and shortly afterward a buxom, attractive woman in her fifties stepped into the entry and then into the workroom. Her chin-length hair was mostly black, gone white around her face in beautiful streaks. Dita, the forensic botanist. She smiled, bleary-eyed but gracious. Lindsey showed her the twig with a partial brown leaf still attached and explained how the trees had lined the road at the site in question. Dita ran it under warm water at the tiny kitchenette, essentially a sink, cupboard, microwave and coffeemaker.

Bendrich translated for Dita. “She says this is easy. Silver bark. Oblate cordate leaves. They are all lipa trees. Called linden’ trees in English? Ano. The national tree of the CzechRepublic!”

Dita added that the trees might even have names that reveal the family that originally planted them, like the famous five-hundred-year-old “Stuculipa” named after the Stuc family in Nebahovy. Dita and Bendrich chattered away some more and Bendrich translated, “The ancient goddess of love was supposed to visit the lipa trees, and then the Catholic Church later changed the story so that it was believed to be Mary in the trees. At one time people could be executed for chopping down a lipa tree. And there’s some kind of lipa celebration during the summer solstice.”

“I think the celebration with the goddess in the tree is what the mural illustrated,” Lindsey said. “And the shape of the trunk and branches was very similar to the trees along the road. This is amazing!”

Dita jabbered again and Bendrich turned to Lindsey, a look of thoughtful surprise on his face. “She said your name is derived from linden trees.”

Lindsey’s jaw dropped a little. She thought of Zuza’s prediction about a tree being important. Could she have actually meant Lindsey? Or the combination of living trees, the painted tree and Lindsey? Who knew? To Lindsey’s way of thinking, information from psychics was interesting, but not reliable. Things could be interpreted so many different ways. Zuza certainly hadn’t bargained on getting shot for her part in all this.

“You have an e-mail!” Marko called.

She silently wished Zuza and the cabbie well during their surgeries and then set Dita and Bendrich to work researching Mucha, linden trees, related place names and other possible links, like family names associated with linden trees. She then took the e-mail at a computer next to Marko’s. Allison had sent her the extraction team guidelines for tactical ops.

The days of getting a few hotshots together to storm an objective “with all ya got” are history. Highly equipped professionals compose today’s extraction teams, and they are well trained in using the wide array of weapons available, ranging from the less-lethal category to handguns to MGL-140s. Through hyper-conditioning in training, their personal reflexes and instincts are well integrated into equipment use, tactical maneuvers and teamwork. The objective isn’t merely extraction, but the highest level of safety and protection possible

.

No problem! She had to cram a six-week course into a few hours and then come up with a brilliant plan for a team that might not make it in time to hit a location she had no knowledge of. And how she’d love to lie down. Lindsey memorized hand signals, read on, and skimmed until the words went blurry. She stopped and rubbed her eyes.

When she opened her eyes again, a steaming cup of coffee sat on her desk, and Marko started massaging her shoulders and back.

“Mmmmm.” It felt so good she could cry. Deeply, his thumbs pressed into her stiff and sore muscles. If only she dared let him work on her thighs and calves, now tight and jittery. This thought produced another image altogether, however, so it was time for him to stop. She grabbed his hands, but he held on.

“Thanks, Marko,” she said, keeping it light.

“I found thirteen possible sites from satellite recon,” he said.

“Good. Let me have a look. I need a break from tactics.” She swigged the coffee and stepped to Marko’s area to look at the printouts, eliminating four of them. “These nine are good possibilities.” She looked over at Bendrich and Dita. “How are you two doing?”

They looked up with frowns of frustration. “We have found a hundred and sixty street names with lipa as part of the name within the thirty-five kilometer radius of Prague,” Bendrich said.

“Any in these locales?” She passed them the printouts and they began to make comparisons.

Lindsey had fallen asleep at the desk. She decided that she might better stay awake and keep a clear head if she changed location for a while. She headed into the little entry area by the elevator and plunked down onto the spartan sofa. The space was lit only by the light from the next room, which felt good on her eyes since they were burning from staring at the computer screen.

Marko followed her. He said, “I think I’ve wrung out all I can from the satellite stuff.”

“And I’m feeling stumped. Until I know a specific location, I can’t go much further.”

She pulled a chair over, propped her head on her bundled coat, put her feet up on the chair and closed her eyes. Marko pulled another chair over for his feet, and his hand found hers. They rested that way in silence. She felt comfort flowing from him, and it felt good.

Her brain continued to spin tactical scenarios, maddening because they could only be for theoretical places and situations. Marko caressed her hand, helping her to relax. She’d been gripping him. She imagined snuggling up next to him with his arm around her and sighed at the loveliness of the idea. Maybe there could be such a time. Afterward.

“When I ran away at seventeen,” Marko said, “just Teal’s age, no one was upset. My mother helped me escape, in fact. Teal’s parents are probably devastated. I want to help Teal get home. It is strange how important having a home has become to me.”

Marko’s thoughts were tender. He probably thought what he was saying was something a woman would want to hear. But she knew where the conversation was heading and Marko had her wrong. Like her ex-fiancée, Marko was finally itching to settle down. He’d want kids, loving them and making a home for them in the way no one ever did for him. He’d had little attention, and he wanted to make up for it.

Lindsey had had plenty of attention. Maybe too much. She loved the life she’d created and didn’t want to abandon it for the responsibilities of being a caregiver and a child’s source of security. She and Marko were in different places; they wanted different things. He was a wonderful, handsome, great guy, but, if she let this go on and grow, one or both of them would be hurt.

She pulled her hand out of his. “Unlike you, I was always in the crosshairs of my dad’s watchful gaze,” Lindsey said. “So, freedom and independence have become my goal, my dream. I love my work. I’ve learned not just to take risks, but to thrive on risk.” She let the implications sink in: children shouldn’t have a mother who was always taking risks, and so Lindsey shouldn’t be a mother

.

He’d remained silent a moment, then said, “But Lindsey, there is much more to you than”

A phone rang in the workroom.

“than this risk thing. Your freedom isn’t”

“Lindsey!” Bendrich called. “Allison is on the line.”

She looked into Marko’s eyes and kissed him on the cheek. “I hope you find your home and your homemaker, Marko.” There was enough sadness in her voice to suggest that Lindsey didn’t envision herself in the role.

There are certain looks that are never to be forgotten. Marko’s frown in the darkened room as she turned and walked away from him was one that would haunt her. In those few seconds before she reached the phone, she knew he’d looked all the way through her and was telling her she was making a disastrous mistake.

Allison said, “Stefan just phoned.”

Lindsey did a quick mental gear shift. “Another psychic impression from Teal?”

“Yes, Teal has eaten, apparently. Stefan said he felt an uncomfortable fullness during the connection to Teal along with images of bread, cheese and sausage. And more importantly, Teal is in the light and feels hopeful. Her abilities are getting stronger. While he can only see the room she’s kept in, Teal is sending him metaphorical images, too. He sees her running toward a woman on a horse, if that makes any sense. But he said the spider is still there. He described it as watching her. Its web covers the ceiling of her room. He thought there was more to this spider image, but he couldn’t tell if Teal herself knew what it was or if he just couldn’t perceive it.”

“Wow. Except for the

” Lindsey took a deep breath “

that spider, this is wonderful news.” Lindsey told Allison more about the psychic demonstration and the image of Penthesilea on horseback. “So, it sounds like she knows Athenas are on their way. Any news about Sam?”

“She took off a little before 1:30 London time, so 2:30 your time. Arrival sometime after 5:30.”

“That’s cutting it close. Too close. Civil twilight begins at 6:34 here,” Lindsey said, using the term she’d originally learned back in an Earth science class at Athena, and which referred to the sun’s position at six degrees below the horizon, rising or setting. It indicated a transition beyond which objects couldn’t be seen clearly, and she didn’t want to be seen clearly. Nautical twilight was more to her liking with the sun twelve degrees below the horizon. It began at 6:30, and that was the cover they needed. “I want to be on-site by 6:00 to set up a secure base. Sunrise is an hour later, but it will be way too bright by then, especially with all the snow.”

“Lindsey, has your extraction team arrived? You’re not thinking like a cowgirl, are you? Do not attempt this rescue without the team. That is an order.”

Lindsey thought about arguing, but since she didn’t even know the location yet, she couldn’t build up enough heat to protest. “It remains a moot point if we don’t know where we’re going. Did you find lists of Mucha’s private commissions?”

“Not yet, but even though it’s only an hour earlier in London than in Prague, I reached the Mucha Foundation in Londona minor miracle in itself. They are excited about the possibility of a new Mucha work and are looking for the records as we speak. What about you?”

Lindsey told Allison about the nine possible sites located from satellite imaging and about the linden trees, and then covered the phone to ask Bendrich if any of the street names appeared in the nine areas.

“Not one,” Bendrich said somberly.

“I think we’re narrowing it down,” Lindsey said, although this was a definite stretch. She hung up. Please, Tito. Come soon.

The spider was watching. Its web covered the ceiling.

What exactly did that mean? Lindsey had thought when she saw the spiderweb on Slick Hair’s neck that Teal’s spider images must refer to him. But a growing web, spread across a ceiling. That didn’t sound like one man.

Teal had seemed to imbue her messages at the demonstration with so much more than the simple images written on paper, with impressions that were highly accurate. This spider thing couldn’t be dismissed as a delusion caused by Teal’s ordeal. Whatever she was referring to, it wasn’t merely a small eight-legged creature.

Chapter 31

L indsey checked the time. It was 3:23 a.m. Still no Tito, no site location, and therefore no concrete plan of attack. She had devised a backup plan. She would bid for Teal at noon, make the bid so high that it would be the winner without looking suspicious, and then, when Jeremy arranged for a trade, the team could strike.

Of course that plan was worst case. For starters, how could she be sure her bid would be chosen? Maybe they would have to

Marko put his hands on her shoulders. “Who was it?”

“Allison. Teal is still alive and feeling more confident.”

“Come out to the common room. Bendrich has laid out the gear you asked for that they have on hand.”

“Terrific. Let’s see what our options are.”

In addition to a handgun for each of them, he’d laid out knives, flashlights and communicators. She felt a nasty twist of disappointment in her gut. Handguns and knives were crude weapons, designed to kill. “I wish I was looking at a Taser. Or even a PepperBall launcher.”

“But for a Taser to work,” he replied with a grin, “you have to count on being less than twenty feet away and any closer than eleven feet and you might as well be using a handgun. If your objective is nonlethal, as you said you prefer, I like the pbl. An ops team doesn’t always have time to customize the weapon to each situation. The PepperBall launchers let you be very aggressive in an assault, and they work. Jeremy’s guards will be armed, so we can’t give them time to turn and fire.”

Marko sounded more knowledgeable than Lindsey had thought. “You’ve done special ops before?”

“Sure. Both in the FFL and for K-bar. I’m heading up the emergency tactical squads and their training for the company.”

This was wonderful. “Marko! Why didn’t you say so?”

“I didn’t think you or your contact wanted me to be that involved.”

“This is about getting the job done, not”

The e-mail chime sounded and Lindsey broke off to return to her computer, Marko right behind her. The incoming message was to Lindsey from Allison at the NSA. The page showed Interpol’s posting of something that had happened only an hour after the attack on Lindsey and Zuza. Two Russian citizens, identified as fifty-eight-year-old Tanya Belikov and her ward, thirteen-year-old Yakob Rozlitz, were attacked in a hotel suite. The boy was apparently left for dead by mistake and he managed to call for help. The call, in Russian, was recorded, and the last thing he said was “They came to make a deal

.”

Lindsey gasped at the close-up photos that revealed Galina’sTanya’sblack hair matted with blood that stained the white carpet around her. The boy lay dead by the phone table, the small hump of his back visible. She shuddered.

Bendrich stuck his head through the door and she gestured for him to come in, too. “The others also might want to see this.”

Dita also joined them.

“I thought that perhaps it was Jeremy who attacked Zuza and me, that perhaps I’d somehow blown my cover, but this pretty much settles that it wasn’t him. Jeremy would have no reason to attack Galina. She was a likely high bidder. I’d say the same bastards who shot Zuza also killed Galina. Just as you guessed, Marko. They’re trying to eliminate their main competition. Given that glimpse I had of a pendant I thought looked like Foo Hai’s, I’d say it’s his work.”

“Which means they thought you were a high bidder and that they still see you as a threat,” Marko said.

Lindsey nodded. “But why kill the boy? He was one of the best psychic receivers at the demonstration, and so young!”

Bendrich studied the photos. “I’d guess that Galina died instantly from a clear shot to the head. The youngster has several shots. He was probably trying to escape.” He shook his head.

All of them shared a look of disgust. To name the killers as evil monsters, though, was a waste of timewhich grew ever more precious. Lindsey gave Marko the tactical file and began poring over all the information she could dig up on the artist, Mucha. Though Dita’s work of identifying the twigs was officially done, she continued to assist Lindsey by pulling up on Bendrich’s computer all of Mucha’s work she could find. Bendrich arranged for an SUV capable of carrying an assault team of seven and the various equipment and weapons. Lindsey felt a surge of hope when she saw that one of Mucha’s epic paintings, called Youth Oath Under the Slavic Linden, was quite similar to the mural.

Further research produced four names of people in office when certain of Mucha’s public works were commissioned. One was a public town hall mural for the mayor of Rokycana in 1933. She cross-referenced the other names to public records of real estate. None owned property in Marko’s nine designated geographical sites.

At quarter to four, an e-mail came from the London Mucha Foundation, listing over forty patrons who commissioned private works, but which included no murals matching the one sought.

Lindsey felt like screaming.

And then at 3:52 a.m., Dita did scream “Loto! Jako hra!”

“What did she say?”

“I believe the best translation is, bingo!’” Bendrich said.

One of the names on London’s list of patrons matched a name of Dita’s very sketchy list of benefactors to the Czech Society Dedicated to the Preservation of Linden Trees. “Baron Barta Von Vlcek, Juniorsky.”

Lindsey checked the London list. “The name from London was just Baron Barta Von Vlcek.”

“The man’s son. One way to say, junior in Czech is juniorsky.’”

“Seriously?”

Bendrich nodded. He immediately went to work on the Internet, and after a few minutes said, “The baron, senior, was a field marshal during WWI.”

Lindsey’s fingers flew in cross-referencing the name with the extensive real estate records Bendrich’s search engines could access. She came up with three property listings for the Von Vlcek family during the years 1910-1939 and by 4:02, figured out that one of the three was in one of Marko’s nine possible geographic locations.

“All this doesn’t prove we’ve found Jeremy’s place, though, right?” Lindsey asked. She studied the satellite photo of the location.

Dita had found not only the parcel number of the place, but also its name. “Statek ze Vlcekulipa.” She was beaming.

Bendrich said, “It would translate Chateau of Lindens planted by the Vlcek family.’ The road name is Silnice Vlcek, which literally means Wolf Road

. The Von Vlceks probably wanted to honor the linden heritage by commissioning the Mucha mural.”

Lindsey was pacing now, virtually certain that they had their target. “Since it was walled off in the war and then forgotten, something must have happened to the owners. Alphonse Mucha was captured by Nazis in 1939. They let him go, though, and he died shortly afterward. Maybe the war prevented the mural from being recorded. Or maybe it wasn’t quite finished. Most of it was covered in gray dust, so I couldn’t really tell.” She stopped pacing. “It’s still hypothetical

.”

Marko, Bendrich and Dita stared at her, waiting. There was no more time for research. She analyzed Marko’s satellite view of the site yet again as he stood beside her, his hand resting on the small of her back as she bent slightly over the table. Fewer trees lined the road than she would have thought, but that could be due to her ground level perspective. She’d thought the gravelly drive connecting the building to the road curved more sharply. And there was a separate octagonal building in front of the chateau that she’d had no hint of, but that could be attributed to the blindfold

.

She stood and squeezed the hand that had been touching her in an oh-so-possessive way. “Okay. We go with this.”

Marko made a gung ho gesture with both fists.

Tito called in. Their ETA was 5:30.

“You should meet your extraction team colleagues at the airport,” Bendrich said. “It’s not too far out of the way to this chateau. If you wait for them to come here, you will lose half an hour.”

Lindsey agreed, and Bendrich went to fetch and load the SUV with the gear and few weapons they had available at the safe house. Dita went to her apartment four blocks away to fetch Lindsey some ski pants, long johns, a thermal pullover and a parka. While she waited, she and Marko threw out ideas as they studied the photo of the chateau and its grounds.

By the time Lindsey had changed her clothes, Marko showed her his rough sketch of the plan so far. “We park here,” he said, pointing, “get out and climb double-time to this point, which looks like it’s a little above and behind the building, a good spot for a secure area. We leave the intelligence person, if the team has one, there with a grenade launcher, an MGL-140. Will he have brought one?”

“Tito absolutely will have one, Marko. Plus other equipment. Tasers and paintball launchers and who knows what else. Stuff for rappelling. He promised to come ready to take down the Death Star.’”

The main road ran east and west. The chateau sat well north of the road, its entrance facing south, and it was reached by a sweeping circular drive that looped up from the road. She studied the coordinates Marko had labeled: ground level of the northwest corner of the chateau was NW1, second floor at that end would be NW2. A basement in that area would be NWB, and so forth.

A modest-sized octagonal building stood separate from the chateau and in front of it, on the opposite side of the circular drive. He’d labeled it OS for the south side octagon. Marko guessed it might have been and still might serve as a guardhouse and it was therefore to be a major objective.

A third building at a right angle off the east side was evidently a garage. He’d labeled it simply G. Two fountains appeared to sit in the front, one on either side of the entry door, although they were covered with snow and so fuzzy in the photo she couldn’t be certain they were, in fact, fountains instead of statues or maybe huge planters.

When she felt she’d memorized the layout, she had Dita make copies of the sketch for Tito’s team. Marko bundled up, as well, and at 5:12, they were just about to head to the airport when another e-mail from Allison came in for Lindsey:

In all the pressure to contact art researchers and coordinate the team’s arrival, I almost forgot to check on the Kestonian who was sweating, Todor. Our experts think he may have taken a temperature-raising drug for purposes of site location through use of a heat-sensitive tracking and targeting device. Be prepared for anything. Good luck.

Chapter 32

A t 5:23 a.m., Pietro Albioni sat bundled up in the darkness of his cold room in the chateau and aimed a small flashlight at the list of buyers for the girl and the CDs. He sat in darkness, wanting Jeremy to think he was sleeping. Pietro’s brain had teemed with larval ideas ever since Foo Hai’s parting comment at Old Town Square

, ideas now beginning to hatch. Was Foo Hai the one to deal with, though?

Escorting Foo Hai and Bing back to Prague, Pietro had ridden behind the driver of the rented limo, his Beretta holstered just inside his suit jacket. Bing, the clever psychic, sat next to him, Foo Hai in front. The driver was one of eight head-bashers Pietro had hired for two days to help handle the bidders. Jeremy had insisted that Pietro serve as an escort along with the hirelings, and this infuriated Pietro until he realized that for once Jeremy was right. Foo Hai and Todor were the bidders most likely to pull something.

Hudak could take care of anything Todor might try, but it was up to Pietro to keep Foo Hai in line. He was one dangerous bastard. It took one to know one. Pietro would bet big money that Foo Hai was some kind of Chinese mafia. Less than ten minutes after leaving the seven-kilometer radius covered by Jeremy’s jamming device, Foo Hai’s backup men had found them and followed the limo. Very impressive, although it had made Pietro cross his arms, reach inside his jacket and keep his hand on the Beretta for the remainder of the trip into town.

Once parked in the square in Prague, Foo Hai stepped out from the front seat and shut the door. Bing and Pietro also climbed out, and Pietro strode around to the front passenger door. Foo Hai had stepped in front of the door, blocking Pietro’s entry.

“You’re still a wiseguy,” Foo Hai had said, an edge of contempt in his voice. He slipped Pietro a business card. “Deal with me and I can make you your own man.”

Foo Hai hadn’t needed his little pipsqueak psychic to know that Pietro used to be in a Family. Foo Hai probably also knew that his offer would release dreams Pietro had tucked in the hiding places of his mind and set them slithering out over every old idea. Pietro didn’t have to remain a victim, a muscleman for Jeremy or anyone.

Pietro grabbed his smokes and lighter and headed downstairs to the chateau’s old wine cellar turned bomb shelter in WWII where the girl was kept. God, he hated the freaky little witch, always watching him with those damn spooky eyes. And damned if he could stare her down, not even if he smacked her a few times. She was tough on the outside, but he also could smell fear coming off her now and then.

He couldn’t smoke anywhere in the main house. Jeremy would wake up and whine about it. And just now, Pietro wanted Jeremy to sleep as long as possible. Candy-ass scientist trying to play with the big boys.

Pietro sat on a folding chair beside the stairwell where he didn’t have a direct view of the girl’s cell. A low-watt light-bulb burned in the hallway at all times. The stone walls around him harbored mold, fungus, bugs, rat holes and the grime of centuries. His cigarette smoke drifted upward, and a black spider dropped down from the cobwebby old rafters. He plucked the spider’s line loose and held it, watching the thing turn and try to climb back up. Pietro let it fall onto the dark, ancient stone of the floor. Four hundred years of spider droppings alone probably made up the dull, fetid shellac covering. He covered the spider with his boot and ground it into a paste.

An overwhelming sense of satisfaction came over him. For a moment

You’re still a wiseguy

.

Foo Hai had nailed it. Pietro had been a low-level Mafia soldier, and if things stayed the same, he might always be. Always doing work that enabled someone else to get rich off his risk and his pain and his smarts.

Just like Uncle Luigi.

Because Luigi really was his uncle, he hadn’t whacked Pietro for trying to take over one of his cousin’s operationswhich Pietro could have run far better than his babbo cousin. Pietro had been “chased.” Was dead to the family.

And now in the same rut, he was working, not for Jeremy, as Jeremy stupidly supposed, but for the one Jeremy only knew as A. The one who branded Pietro with her web. The one who’d learned what his uncle would have whacked him for, nephew or not. Pietro had been the one who named his cousin to the cops.

Somehow, A found out about it and had blackmailed Pietro into being her slave ever since. He was still a wiseguy, only instead of his uncle, his boss was an evil bitch, far worse than Luigi had ever been.

And for all the work he’d done on this current job, all the shit from Jeremy that he’d put up with, his cut of this latest fat deal was a mere twenty-five K. A for Arachne. A spider woman. She was as powerful, if not more so, than any MafiaItalian, American, Russian or Chinese. There was no direct way to compare their power to hers, but she had contacts all over the world who did whatever she told them to do. Blackmail. Pietro was almost certain that was how she did it. She found out things. And the more things she found out, the more things there were to find.

If Pietro could deliver the little freak in the cell a few feet away, plus Jeremy’s CDs, all sold to the right buyer, it would change everything. Pietro could be his own man. He’d have money to go where his uncle couldn’t find him, where even Arachne couldn’t find him. An island in Fiji. Or some little spot off South America. He’d buy his own goddamn island.

Pietro ground out his cigarette stub with his boot, as he’d done to the spider. He’d decided.

The real question still was, who was the right buyer? Foo Hai was just plain scary. Capable of a deal followed up with a knife in the back. The Kestonian was nuts, and didn’t really have any money. Neither did Yun, the North Korean. Yun just didn’t seem to want the package that much. The Russian woman and the Platt woman probably had the most money, but didn’t seem like the types to risk a double cross. They might just back out of the whole deal, or even alert Jeremy. Pietro couldn’t read women the way he could read men. Didn’t want to deal with the bitches. None of the buyers were quite right for what Pietro had in mind, but if he waited for perfection, he’d be as old as Luigi before getting anywhere. This was the moment. He pictured a tiny, jagged crack in the window of opportunity and brightened at his poetic thought.

The girl started coughing. She’d complained the first day about Pietro’s smoking, and he had taken a full ashtray and dumped it on her. She was slowly learning to be less of a bitch.

5:34 a.m. He wanted more time, but if he was going to pull this thing off, he had to move now. Pietro made his choice. He’d just have to anticipate every possible way Foo Hai could sabotage him and be one step ahead.

Pietro called Foo Hai and made arrangements for the sale of Teal. Foo Hai need not bid against competitors. Pietro guaranteed Foo Hai delivery of Teal and the disks with information on the genetic procedures to produce modified embryos. The deal included fifteen million for Pietro alone in U.S. dollars, to be deposited in a Swiss account he’d kept secret since his Mafia days.

“I’ve made plenty of trades of goods for money,” Pietro said. “And to be damn certain the bitch and the disks don’t get away at some point in the transfer, I want to put a GPS on them.”

“Why would they get lost?”

“Like I say, I’ve done this plenty of times. Things happen. I want to be able to find the girl and the disks. When you take possession, you can take the damn things off if you want. I can get my hands on Jeremy’s bugs and tracking devices. Do you have the ability to find the girl and the disks if I give you the tracking codes?”

A silent pauseFoo Hai probably trying to figure out if there was some trick involved. There wasn’t. It was simply good insurance, learned mostly from Pietro’s experiences selling drugs, but he figured the same principle would apply here. Any time things were in transit, something could go wrong.

“Of course, I have tracking equipment. Go ahead. Plant your bugs. But we have to move fast. How soon can you deliver?” Foo Hai asked.

Pietro needed an hour to plan and pull everything together and a half hour to drive to the city. “I can reach the Prague address by 7:15 a.m. Just after sunup.”

“Too light. And we have a long drive. We’re not waiting around. 6:45.”

“You’d have had to wait until noon, even later to take possession, if I didn’t deal with you.”

“This change of plans only works for us on a much earlier time frame.”

Pietro broke into a light sweat. Foo Hai was pushing him, deliberately undercutting Pietro’s planning, rushing him, confusing him.

“7:00 is the best I can do. Final offer.”

Foo Hai accepted and Pietro hung up.

It was now 5:37. Shit! He’d have to bust his balls. He stood, walked to her tiny room, and looked inside. “I got new plans for you.”

Chapter 33

A t 5:38, Sam’s plane had arrived at the small, private airport, but not Tito’s. Lindsey felt nauseated, her guts twisting slowly. Their best hope of taking Teal back was rapidly slipping away. Standing beside the SUV, she and Sam exchanged hugs. Marko shook Sam’s gloved hand.

“Your team?” Sam asked as she looked around the empty space.

“Not yet here. Late. Due in at 5:30.”

After a small silence, Lindsey said, “Do you agree, Marko, that we’d have very little chance to succeed if we attempt the extraction ourselves with the equipment we have and only the three of us?”

“Totally. Eye-to-eye. We could modify a bit. We’d still have the cover of darkness. But depending on how many goons Jeremy has kept around, this will be difficult to pull off even if your team arrives. On the other hand, we have zero chance of success in daylight.”

Lindsey slid into the driver’s seat and restarted the SUV’s engine. “We can’t wait for daylight and we can’t rely on winning the bid. We have to go now.”

Her outlook was grim as they drove out of the parking lot.

“Wait, Linds!” Marko shouted. He’d been looking into his side-view mirror. He turned around and looked back. “There’s a jet coming in.”

Lindsey used Marko’s cell phone to connect with Tito. The extraction team was there and ready to boogie.

Two women and two men lugged gear to the parking lot and dropped it beside the white SUV. They all looked like they meant business in their snowy-patterned camo overalls and parkas in shades of white, gray and light gray-brown.

Marko, Lindsey noted, automatically inventoried the weapons as Tito made introductionsfirst names only. Ferris, the team’s information coordinator. Monique, a willowy brunette, expert in munitions and weapons. Tia, six foot two, looked to be half Asian, half African, their electrical systems specialist.

Lindsey introduced Marko. “My

associate, well trained in tactics. He’ll brief you on the plan as we go.” Marko shook hands heartily with the two men, Tito and Ferris.

Sam introduced herself quickly to Tito’s team as people stacked gear in the SUV.

Lindsey did the driving, and they roared off in a direction southwest of Prague. Marko immediately began explaining the plan. When there were no questions, Marko said, “Okay, let’s do a static run-through.”

Very slowly, they all talked through each position and each tactical movement. Then they did a “fluid” step-by-step with only short prompts from Marko. Then came the “dynamic” unprompted, rapid run-through. They repeated it. Were they able to, they would have done every move many times in real time and with a physical mock-up. This time, repetition with the map of the property in their hands would have to suffice.

“According to the SUV’s GPS map, we’re about seven minutes from target,” Lindsey said.

She pulled over and jumped out, Marko relieving her at the wheel. As they drove ahead, Lindsey squirmed into the Kevlar vest, the boots, helmet and high-performance gloves they’d brought for her. Everyone else donned full gear, as well. Tia passed out individual audio units she called “earwigs,” and everyone put them on. Tia and Sam ran a quick operational test of the devices that would keep them all in constant contact.

The first message through the earwig was Monique saying, “Who’s T-1? Tito or Marko?”

Lindsey said, “Marko’s plan is good as far as it goes, and we’ll begin with it, but since we don’t have a floor plan of the chateau or any idea where we’ll meet resistance, or even where the girl is, the assault is highly dynamic. This is Tito’s team. He should run it. Marko can be T-2.”

They memorized everyone’s alphanumeric designations. The intelligence officer, Ferris, was T-3. Lindsey was T-7, dead last in the chain of command. Fair enough. She clearly was the person here with least experience.

The SUV turned onto a road lined with barren trees on either side, sturdy silver-gray branches gleaming in the headlights. Her linden trees. Lindsey almost shouted for joy. This was the place. All their research had paid off. They’d gotten it right.

“Cut the headlights,” she said to Marko. “This is it.”

Chapter 34

W ith the SUV parked off the road between the lindens, team members unloaded and stuffed backpacks and gear belts. Lindsey was running on high speed and happy that someone else was in charge for the time being. She could just focus on getting to Teal and not have to worry as much about the whole team.

She watched Marko run in a crouch across a narrow, snow-covered field, occasionally sinking into snow almost up to his knee. In the gray dawn twilight, his dark green parka marked him as someone different in a way the team’s uniform camo-patterned clothing would not. He became a shadow, charging the darkness like a moose. Lindsey’s borrowed parka was white, fortunately, and her ski pants gray. Thank God for the boots Sam had brought. Lindsey wasn’t comfortable with the close helmet worn inside the parka hood, but it was necessary.

A wooded areablackened with a scattering of dense, dark, evergreensbordered the field. Marko became a mere blur as he moved along the tree line and up a little ridge. And then she couldn’t see him at all, but he spoke inside her ear, as he did to the whole team.

“T-2,” he said.

“T-1, responding,” Tito replied.

“Secure area site seems okay,” Marko said as clearly as if he stood right beside Lindsey. “High-gable, two-story building looks dark inside. Shabby. First-floor windows barred or shuttered. Entry from this side unlikely. Round tower, capped like a witch’s hat with a spire rises up from the back. Looks like four stories. Center front of the chateau is a square tower like a castle. Three stories. Flat roof. Satellite photos didn’t show it clearly. Wait, there’s movement

Two men are up there, armed with rifles. Ground level of the tower has massive entry doors, flanked by two more guards

. Across wide driveway area, the O building. Light on. Its entry faces chateau

Someone’s moving there, too. Armed.”

O building. The octagonal building in front, Lindsey reminded herself.

“Roger,” Tito answered. “Any other buildings?”

“Looks like a four-car garage east of the building. One story.”

“Can you see the rear of the witch’ tower?”

“Not from here,” Marko answered, “but give me two minutes.”

“Go.”

Ferris, T-3, scurried over to the area they had decided would be their “secure” site first, carrying an MGL-140 and a bag along with his backpack. In the deep grayness, he looked like a fast-moving white ball, about to become a snowman. At twenty-second intervals, the rest of the team members also crossed to the site. Lindsey trudged double-time through the newly trampled snow, ran along the tree line and joined the group. Sam arrived last. The team proceeded to set up the secure area according to Marko’s plan.

Two canisters of extra rounds of red OC balls, Oleoresin Capsicum, the size of large jawbreakers stood out even in the grayness. They were extra rounds for the PepperBall launchers, and looked like giant timed-release medicine capsules. It was amazing how quickly the gear piled up. Their secure area site took on the appearance of a mini HQ. Lindsey helped the team build up a hasty snow wall to avoid being seen by the guards from the crenellated “castle” tower, now within ballistic range.

Tito turned to Lindsey. “You were inside the chateau?”

“Yes.”

“You and Marko have worked together?”

“Yes.”

“Teal has seen you?” Tito looked toward the eastern gray horizon, growing ever lighter.

“Yes.” It was 6:16.

“We need to hurry,” Tito said. “You there, T-2?”

“T-2 here,” Marko answered. “Witch’ tower juts out from main building in back. Rear door is padlocked. Snow buildup indicates it’s unused. Guard on a balcony, second floor.”

“Other entries?”

Marko was silent a moment. “Not on rear north wall. I can’t see the east wall, but if it’s like the west wall, there is nothing. Unless it’s under the snow.”

“We don’t have time for full recon. We go with what we know.”

Marko explained a modified plan, choosing Tia as his accomplice.

Tito agreed. “New coordinate objective. Witch 2. Go.”

Sam helped Tia with the necessary gear, and Tia loped off to join Marko. A twinge of jealousy stopped Lindsey for a moment: Why had Marko chosen Tia over Lindsey? Was he keeping his distance from her? She didn’t like it, but had to let it go for now.

Marko waited for T-5, the exotic and stunning Amazon-like woman.

“Slip farther back into the trees, T-5,” Marko said into his earwig speaker. “The guard looks through binocs into the woods every so often.”

When Tia reached him, they moved through the woods together, absolutely silent in spite of zigzagging to stay concealed by evergreens. Lindsey, lacking the hours of training required to reach such silent perfection, might be pissed that he’d asked for Tia’s help, but if Lindsey chewed him out later she’d also understand when he explained. Another great thing about Lindseyfor her the op was the point, success the goal, not personal stuff.

In back of the chateau, they turned toward one of the trees that stood maybe a hundred and sixty feet tall, like a giant Christmas pine, snow piled on its sagging branches. It stood only about thirty feet away from the second-floor balcony where a guard sipped from a steaming mug, staying close to what glowed like a camp heater.

Marko had also specifically asked for Tia because of her height. He knelt for her to climb up onto his shoulders, knees first, and then as she pulled herself onto him, she also carefully pulled up on pine boughs. An avalanche of snow tumbled from the branch, despite her care. Damage done, she stood, and Marko moved with her to their combined height of twelve and a half feet. They stood among the tree branches, frozen until Tia could see what the guard would do.

She whispered into her earwig. “He heard it. He’s looking around.”

A raucous call not ten feet away nearly made Marko leap out of his skin. Black wings flapped nearby. Tia gasped. A raven was leaving its nocturnal perch, croaking, unhappy about the intrusion. Crows soon joined in, and a small migration started of black rags flapping noisily in the grayness. Marko’s pulse normalized.

“The guard is looking our way with his binoculars,” Tia breathed.

Seconds ticked away.

“He put them down and is

not reaching for his weapon.”

“Okay, proceed,” Marko whispered back.

He’d clipped the PepperBall launcher onto his belt on one side, and on the other Tia’s specially modified “less-lethal” twelve-gauge shotgun. The shotgun was fitted with a silencer and loaded with rubber bullets. The plan was to make the rescue but leave no dead bodies behind, nothing that might force Czech authorities into asking hard questions. K-bar had also adopted this policy for NSI. But just in case, all of them also carried very lethal handguns on their belts. Along with other goodies.

Slowly, so slowly, Marko passed the launcher upward, not disturbing a single snowflake. The thing looked like a kid’s giant space-blaster squirt gun with a hopper full of red balls that some said looked like a gumball machine.

“Guard rubbing his hands by the heater,” Tia whispered.

Marko felt her weight on his shoulders shift subtly and knew she was taking aim.

Pop!

The guard grunted loudly as if hawking up phlegm. Marko could see the harsh powder that rose up around the man, who coughed repeatedly.

Pop!

“Guard on his knees, voiceless, but

“

The guard produced a choked “okkk” sound.

“He’s down!” she said softly into her earwig.

Marko turned, stepped away from the tree, and Tia jumped to the ground and handed him the launcher. They took off running toward the witch tower.

At the base of the tower, Tia pulled out her handgun and aimed it up at the struggling guard. “Don’t move,” she said clearly into her wrist unit. “Translate, E to C,” she added.

“Neopovaz se podrazdit,” said the speaker inside the device, but the man already seemed still, just sort of croaking in agony.

“First entry contact secure,” Marko said into the earwig. A voice came from secure base. “T-2, T-5, put on goggles and half masks now, before approaching PepperBall area. T-6, over.”

Marko pulled down safety goggles from inside his helmet and pulled up the lightweight mask from inside the knit collar of his turtleneck. Tia did the same. Tia pulled out the Natick retractable grappling hook from a pocket on the leg of her jumpsuit. Marko untied a lanyard holding fifteen feet of tubular nylon rope and attached one end of the rope to the grappling hook and the other end of the line to a climbing pulley on his belt. He hit a button and the hook sprang into a claw with three strong talons. He heaved the hook seven feet upward to the ledge where it caught instantly, and then tugged at the line for safety. The connection proved solid; he scaled up the wall and over the balustrade, then dropped the line down to Tia.

The guard was thrashing around, working his way blindly toward his Kalashnikov near the great wooden door to the tower’s interior. If the guard pounded the door it would boom like a drum. Marko kicked the weapon aside, pulled his own handgun out and held it on the man, whose cheek and forehead had purple-red welts on it the size of grapefruits. The guard squeezed his swollen eyes shut.

Tia scrambled up the rope and climbed onto the balcony, as well. She took the man’s weapon, heaved it into a snow-covered shrub below, then took dead aim at the man with a device Marko hadn’t ever seen before, let alone used. It looked like an extremely heavy, pointed flashlight.

As if Tia were Spider-Man, a white wad shot out and immediately enveloped the guard in a tough Kevlar Capture Net. She secured it in back. If the guy could talk, he’d probably say, just shoot me and be done with it.

Quickly retrieving the grappling hook and rope, Marko said to the man, “Some day soon, when you realize you’re okay, you will thank me for this.”

The guard began sputtering what sounded like someone trying to curse in Czech.

“E anche tua madre!” Marko replied.

Tia grinned at him flirtatiously and said, “Translate, I to E” into her wrist.

“And so is your mother,” her wrist answered mechanically.

Marko smiled and threw the grappling hook to the next level. “T-2 to T-1,” he said into the earwig cosa. “Witch 2, secure. Proceeding to Witch 4.”

“Double-quick,” Tito said back. “We’re losing the cover of darkness. Hustle.”

Marko checked his watch. 6:36. Still almost a half hour until dawn. They’d only used up ten minutes since Tia joined him.

He and Tia encountered no one on the second tower balconyfrom which they could step off onto the steeply angled roof that looked badly in need of patching. They scaled the roof quickly to the top level where a balustrade encircled the whole tower. The two guards there, now watching the front of the chateau, stood a mere twenty-five feet away and slightly below on the roof of the three-story “castle” tower. Smiling, Tia boffed his shoulder. We did it, she was saying.

0639 hours. The climb had only taken three minutes.

“T-2 to T-1. Witch 4, secure,” Marko said. “In position to take castle tower.”

“Copy that. All team, alert,” Tito said. “Execute plan to storm front.”

Chapter 35

L indsey crouched with Sam, T-6, beside the southwest corner of the front of the chateau waiting for Tito’s signal. Monique, T-4, was at her station on the east side of the chateau, near a midsize building that was clearly a garage. To the south, Tito waited by the nearest linden tree on the road beyond the octagonal building.

Lindsey wondered how close Teal had to be to pick up thoughts. She spoke to Teal in her mind. Do you know we’re here for you, Teal?

Could this beautiful, smart, talented strong girl feel the presence of her rescuers? Lindsey tried mentally to tell Teal to be ready to roll. Their plan counted on the fact that Jeremy would never hurt Teal; she was too valuable a property. But now that Lindsey had found her, he must absolutely be prevented from sending Teal elsewhere. And then there were the disksthe lives of sixteen other girls were also at stake. Jeremy must be taken alive and the disks recovered.

At Tito’s alert, Lindsey rose, tense, ballistic stun shield ready on her left arm, her Beretta handgun ready but holstered. Her stun shield, a cutting-edge device invented by an Athena grad, could stop any bullet fired from greater than ten feet away and under ten feet, it could stop anything except armor-penetrating ammo. The plan was for her and Sam to immediately enter the house, where Jeremy and the others wouldn’t be heavily dressed. So she held, instead of the Beretta, an Advanced M 20 Taser in her right hand, aimed at the chateau’s entry. Sam carried their entry ram on her back.

Tito’s command sounded. “Execute attack! Go!”

From the secure base, Ferris fired the grenade launcher twice. The first round hit with a stunning blast in the middle of the driveway area between the octagon building and front door. Almost immediately after, a second blast struck the drive in front of the garage. Tito shot a flash-bang through the window beside the chateau’s door and followed up with a smoke bomb.

Balls of fire puffed up as high as the castle tower. Blasted snow melted into a shock wave of rain. Gravel shot out like shrapnel, pelting the chateau, O building and garage, and breaking off every icicle that hung from the pair of snow-covered fountains on either side of the door. Then from the south and east, Tito and Monique fired flash-bangs in rapid sequence, aiming near the doors to the chateau and O building, producing earsplitting noise and a terrifying fan of flame from a metallic powder that exploded harmlessly the instant it came into contact with oxygen. For Lindsey, and hopefully anyone inside, the overall effect was pretty spectacular. It looked as if a full-scale lethal assault were taking place.

At 6:40 a.m., and wearing his parka, Pietro slipped into Jeremy’s den having already tied, gagged and bugged the girl. She was ready to be moved. Pietro needed only the disks. He had watched Jeremy placing things in his safe often enough to have memorized the combination.

A blast, like a dropped bomb, jolted him upright. Then another and another. Shock and panic stopped his heart a moment and sent its own blast of pure adrenaline. In overdrive, he frantically twirled the dial on the safe. Wrong turn. He started over again. Mother of God, another wrong turn. Slow down!

Jeremy burst into the room, wild-eyed, mouth agape.

He gasped when he saw Pietro. “What are you doing here?”

Shit! “I’m saving the disks. We’re being raided.”

Jeremy’s face flushed from white to purple, his sarcasm venomous. “Reeeeealllly! Do you think so?” He whipped out a gun and pointed it directly at Pietro. “Get away from my safe.”

What the hell was Jeremy to make of Pietro? Was Pietro responsible for what was clearly a major assault on the chateau? In this moment, Jeremy could not think, could not move.

“Bring the disks!” Pietro said, his face flushed. “Then we grab the girl and get the fuck out of here. Through the cellar door.”

Jeremy brushed Pietro aside and started turning dials, keeping the gun trained on Pietro.

“That big bush by the side door to the garage,” Pietro said. “We make a run for it. Then the garage.”

The safe opened. Jeremy snatched up the fake disks and stuffed all of them in the pockets of his slacks. These fakes were CDs that appeared to be the real thing, but were, on careful inspection, useless and nonsensical. They were fabricated from bits of truth, procedures, names and addresses, but fatally garbled and even he would have to study them a bit to discern the fraud. Jeremy had made them for the demonstration and just in case he needed to fool someone temporarily. Well, it looked as though that moment would soon be upon him.

Running ahead of Pietro, he dashed for the kitchen. He would grab his jacket, then the girl. As they reached the bottom of the stairs to the cellar he felt Pietro bump into him hard, almost as though on purpose.

“Keep the fuck away from me,” Jeremy said. “I don’t know whether to kill you now or later.”

Great, just fantastic! Pietro thought, waiting for the sound of gunfire as he pulled his hand away from Jeremy’s coat pocket. Was this Foo Hai double-crossing a double-crosser? You could never trust anyone.

As Lindsey sprinted along the chateau wall toward the front tower entry, she heard excruciating yelps from the tower roof above. Marko was up there. A part of her brain registered worry that he might be the one suffering pain, though logic told her he’d most likely inflicted it. She and Sam were halfway to the “castle” tower door.

A mechanical voice spoke over a bullhorn in Czech, coming from Tito’s direction. It was Tito’s message translated by his wrist translator and electronically magnified. The intimidating effect was to make it sound like a robot was leading an invasion. She told the guards that they had a chance to surrender peacefully now or be attacked on the count of three.

“Jeden

dva

tn

“

One man yelled something in Czech as he fled the octagonal house, one hand raised, the other throwing down a Kalashnikov. Another man followed him out of the octagon, also leaving behind his automatic weapon.

Apparently seeing the capitulation, two more guards stepped out of the front of the chateau, coughing and rubbing their eyes, seemingly ready to surrender, as well. Because neither was wearing a heavy jacket, Lindsey kept the Beretta holstered and trained her Taser on one. Sam did the same, holding a Taser on the other man.

At the same instant, Monique emerged from beside the garage, her handgun trained on the heavily clad guards at O building. Tito ran up the driveway, carrying an assault rifle. One of the door guardsLindsey’s manwho’d been in the act of setting his weapon down slowly, suddenly whirled toward Tito.

Lindsey fired the Taser. Two darts, probes attached to wires, shot 50,000 volts into the man’s back. He jolted straight up and fell over, squeezing off a few rounds harmlessly into the snow as he fell. The Taser’s takedown power was supposed to be more effective than a handgun, and Lindsey believed it. To reload, she immediately removed the spent air cartridge and snapped in another.

Sam said, “Cover my man,” and she ran to the fallen guard, kicked the Kalashnikov away, pulled out a strange weapon Lindsey had never seen before, aimed and fired at the man, instantly encasing him in a net. He began moving a little and moaning.

Staring wide-eyed at the amazing net, Lindsey aimed her Taser at the other guard. Having secured one guard, Sam reloaded her gizmo and similarly secured the other guard.

Tito shouldered his rifle. Lindsey heard him say in English, “Anyone else want to try anything?” Tito then raised the bullhorn clipped to his waist. The translated robot voice posed the same question in Czech. The two remaining men shook their heads.

Next Tito said, “Front guard takedown complete. T-4, secure the prisoners. T-2 and T-5. Your status?”

“Secure and coming atcha,” Lindsey heard Marko say.

Thank God, Marko was okay. A sense of relief like a physical wave surprised her. She looked up and almost directly above her, Tia and Marko were rappelling down the tower wall, Tia with a Kalashnikov slung over her shoulder, obviously taken from a guard.

The house was quiet. Lindsey thought, ominously quiet. Seven guards were down. Counting Slick Hair and Jeremy, at least four armed men were probably inside. The team must keep up their momentum. She guessed that from the time of the first firing of the grenades, not more than two minutes had passed.

The chateau door stood open so Sam ditched the entry ramhaving it on her back would only hinder her movements. Stun shields at the ready, side by side, Lindsey and Sam rushed the door.

Chapter 36

L indsey faced a guard running down the stairway. He stopped at the base, about ten feet from her, a slick-looking Glock waving back and forth between her and Sam.

The man fired two deafening shots. A bullet zinged off Sam’s shield and another hit Lindsey’s shield where it stuck. She fired the Taser. The man lurched and fell before he could fire a third round, and Sam leaped in and snatched his weapon. Rapid footfalls. Someone was running from a side room. Lindsey crouched and turned her shield just as the approaching man fired at her. Mr. Eyebrows. The bullet hit the shield at an angle and ricocheted. Her ears ached with the noise.

She rearmed her Taser with another cartridge. Apparently seeing that the bullet didn’t penetrate the shield, Brows kept running and jumped her, only to land directly on the shield, shocking himself and knocking them both to the floor. His eyebrows froze in a look of astonished pain. Flushed with satisfaction, Lindsey wiggled out from under him and sprang to her feet.

Sam fired capture nets over the two men as the rest of the team rushed inside, absent Ferris, who was holding down the secure site, and Monique, whose job was to make sure no vehicles left the garage.

With Sam beside her, Lindsey sprinted to the back of the stairway, looking for stairs that led to the basement. Lindsey had asked Marko specifically about the basement. All of Teal’s images to Stefan had seemed to scream “basement” or “cellar.”

“The kitchen,” Lindsey said to Sam. They dashed back past the foot of the stairs. Tito and Tia were leaping two steps at a time upward, their task to search the second floor where the demonstration had been held in case Jeremy had kept Teal captive nearby. Marko’s job was to comb the first floor.

Lindsey found a narrow wooden spiral staircase leading downward from the back of the kitchen. Their footfalls sounding way too loud in her ears, Lindsey moved swiftly down with Sam at her back. She expected to find one big room. Instead, a hallway lit by a single bulb extended straight in front of her and then divided.

“Split,” Sam said. She took off to Lindsey’s left and disappeared into the first room off the hallway. Lindsey turned right and checked the first small room there. Nothing but dust-covered storage boxes.

She moved back into the hallway and heard footsteps from behind. She quickly backtracked to the stairway. Halfway down the central hallway leading to the other side of the basement, Jeremy pushed a bound Teal in front of him as Pietro followed them both.

Lindsey charged down the hallway toward the three figures. “T-7 to T-6girl spotted,” she said, her pitch elevated and her speech rushed. “Back me up.”

Jeremy and Slick Hair whirled toward her, and Slick, who was holding a gun on Teal, fired a shot that tore through Lindsey’s parka’s right arm. She didn’t feel anything. Maybe he’d missed.

She tackled him around the waist and they spun in a half circle, her back crashing into the wall. Another shot from Slick went wild.

“Kill her, kill her,” Jeremy shouted.

Lindsey pushed Slick, and the two of them crashed into Teal, who fell to the floor. Jeremy grabbed Lindsey around the neck from behind and pulled her away from Slick. A barrage of gunfire from the other end of the hallway deafened her. She rammed her elbow into Jeremy’s gut, he released her, and she threw herself on top of Teal as the firing continued.

She heard Jeremy and Slick’s footsteps scrambling away from her down the hall, fleeing from Sam’s gunfire. They couldn’t know that Sam had strict orders not to kill anyone.

“T-7 to T-1,” Lindsey said into her earwig mic. “We have Teal!”

The whole team responded through their mics with a quick cheer.

“Are you wounded?” Sam asked Lindsey as she sank to one knee.

“I’m okay.” Tape across her mouth, Teal moaned, but her eyes shone with relief.

Sam rose and turned to chase the two men when they heard Ferris say, “This is T-3. Stealth movement outside between SE-1 and G. At least two figures.”

Tito said, “T-2, begin pursuit. There must have been another exit we couldn’t see on the recon photo. T-5 and T-7, meet me at the front of the house.”

Marko was in the kitchen, a room on the chateau’s east side, when Ferris reported movement of at least two men outside and Tito gave the order for Marko to pursue. At the kitchen window, Marko looked outside. Jeremy and another manmost likely the one Lindsey called Slick Hairwere hunkered beside an enormous bush next to the garage.

A small door appeared to lead from the kitchen to the garage. He headed for the door.

Sam hesitated for a moment as if unsure whether to chase the men or follow Tito’s directions.

Lindsey scrambled to her feet. “Go,” she said to Sam. “I’m right behind.”

Sam turned and raced toward the front of the house. Lindsey pulled Teal into a sitting position. She turned off her communicator. “Athenas are here for you, sweetie.” She pulled a knife strapped to her ankle and cut the duct tape binding Teal’s wrists. More tape covered Teal’s mouth. No time to do the painful job of removing that. “You’re safe. I want you to sit here, okay. Don’t you move until I come back for you. Okay?”

“Mmmm mmmm,” Teal muttered, nodding.

Flicking her communicator on, Lindsey raced back up the stairs. Again, she heard Tito. “T-6, do you have GPS units on you?”

“Yes, and magnet dart gun,” Sam replied.

“Good,” Tito said. “A reminder! All teamdo not fire standard weapons directly at any escaping car. The captive guards and team members will be in target area. Rememberno bodies can be left behind! This must be clean.”

In the entry hall Lindsey met up with Sam, Tito and Tia. Tito hand-signaled Tia and said, “T-5, assume diversion position outside. Repeat diversion as needed.”

Tia dashed out the front door. “On me,” Tito commanded, looking at Lindsey and Sam. The two of them followed him out the front door. Tito indicated with a hand signal that Lindsey should take up a position near the main garage door opening. Lindsey did as ordered, but felt a rush of fear. The site had no cover for her except her stun shield.

Tito and Sam dashed across the curved drive and ducked down beside the easternmost of the two fountains. The two snow-cloaked blips on the satellite photo had proved to be large matched fountains.

Tito continued, “T-1 and T-6 are now at O. T-3, standing by with MGL.”

Gunfire sounded inside the garage. Lindsey dropped into a squat, her shield extended in front of her, her heart thundering in her ears. The old wood doors burst open, and the tires of a limo screeched as the car shot forward. Through her earwig, Lindsey heard the sound of Marko struggling, swearing in Italian and then a loud oof.

What’s happening?

Tito rose and began firing magnetic GPS darts at the fleeing limo. Monique fired flash-bangs and smoke grenades to try to blind and confuse the driver, Slickthe only person Lindsey could see in the car. Hell fire! Did he have Jeremy? Did he have the disks?

“T-2, here,” Marko said, panting. “Prime target secure. Secondary target alone in car.” Lindsey leaped up. Slick made a surprise U-turn, spewing snow and gravel as he drove out the other end of the driveway.

“All team, stop that limo, BAMP!” Tito’s voice said in the earwig.

BAMP. “By any means possible.” An explosion sounded, and then the ack-ack-ack of at least two Mk-48-O models, momentarily deafening Lindsey. But to no avail. Slick’s car was fast disappearing down the lane of trees.

“Hold fire,” Tito said.

The sudden silence seemed to ring in Lindsey’s ears.

Lindsey checked her watch. 6:54, still ten minutes before sunrise.

She ran into the garage. Marko was flex-cuffing Jeremy, who now endured a nasty, bleeding cut at the corner of his mouth.

“Teal is still in the basement,” Lindsey said. “I’m going to her.”

“I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” Marko replied.

Lindsey found Teal still sitting on the floor, her back to the dank wall. She was trying to peel the duct tape from her mouth. Lindsey helped her stand up, and Teal grabbed Lindsey in a breath-stealing hug, long and fierce. Lindsey felt tears welling and blinked them back. “Come with me to a better place. I’ll get the tape off.”

Marko had flex-cuffed Jeremy’s hands behind his back and taken him into the chateau’s kitchen. Lindsey and Teal joined them. Without a word being spoken, Marko stepped over to Lindsey, pulled her close, and pressed her head to his shoulder. He didn’t need to use words. They simply stood that way a long moment. She let herself relax into the feeling of being safeand cared for.

Then, with the help of Tia’s first-aid kit, Lindsey gingerly eased the tape from Teal’s lips. Other team members were rounding up gear and captivesall recovering from their stuns and PepperBall ordeals. Before they left, the team would bind the men with everyday, common rope, they would clean the site of ammo and anything else incriminating, and when they were well away, they would inform the authorities where the men could be found.

Jeremy kept muttering and swearing. He’d handed over the disks he’d been attempting to take with him as he fled. “I goddamn well knew you were Athena. I knew it,” he muttered again.

“Stop moaning, Jeremy,” Marko said. “Where is your office?” He pushed Jeremy out of the kitchen. Bringing Teal and the first-aid kit, Lindsey followed them.

In Jeremy’s office, Marko shoved Jeremy into an armchair and took the seat at Jeremy’s computer, which was still turned on. “You may think you’re a brilliant scientist, but you’re canal scum, a common criminal.”

Marko inserted a disk, opened a file that was in English, and started reading it. Lindsey watched over his shoulder. She had no way of evaluating whether Jeremy’s procedures were correct or not. At least it wasn’t simply garbage. It looked like sophisticated formulas and procedures. Marko put in a new disk. Jeremy stood up and Marko didn’t protest when Jeremy also started looking at the screen.

Teal took Lindsey’s hand. “Thank you, Lindsey. Thank you so much,” she said.

Lindsey squeezed back.

“My parents?”

“Someone from the Academy will contact them soon. When we’re safely out of this country and in a secure location.”

“I have so much to tell you about what I think is really going on here, but

” Her stomach growled. “

do you have any food? I’m so hungry.”

The earnest look in the girl’s lovely eyes made Lindsey want to ransack the house. She was about to say no, but she checked the first-aid kit, found several nutrition bars and handed them to Teal, who tore one open and bit off half.

Tito’s voice over the earwig said to Tia, who was with Monique, now back with Ferris at the safe site, “T-5, did the GPS magnets stick to the limo?”

“Yes. Three of ‘em. I’m tracking them now. The man’s heading toward Prague.”

“T-2, are the items legit? Are they what we’re looking for?”

Marko answered quickly. “I’m checking now. There’s a lot here.”

“Stop scrolling,” Teal said to Marko. She leaned closer to the screen, frowning at the names. “Nikki Bustillo and Jessica Whittaker are girls at the Academy.”

“Okay,” Sam said through the earwig. “I heard that. Good enough for me. We have finished cleaning up.” She chuckled. “Some folks are not happy. Let’s exit.”

Marko ejected the disk, placed it in its labeled case and grabbed the other four cases. For a microsecond Marko looked at Lindsey in a way that was soft with caring and with optimism that the ordeal was almost over. He rose and turned off the computer.

The first sun rays appeared in the east as Lindsey hurried out of the chateau with Teal. Marko jerked Jeremy along.

“I need my medicine,” Jeremy whined.

“Shut up, asshole!” Marko said.

Lindsey and Teal had run less than halfway across the field to the safe area when Ferris’s voice suddenly yelled into her earwig. “Incoming chopper! Assume combat alert!”

Chapter 37

R unning with Teal at her side, Lindsey looked at the girl in sudden horror. Someone in that chopper was coming to take Teal. Lindsey couldn’t think how she knew this, but she was certain. Though her ears were still ringing from all the gunshots, she could hear the approach of the chopper through the earwig. Ferris asked permission to fire the MGL.

“Negative,” Tito said. “Continue to maintain low profile. We don’t know who these guys are yet.”

Lindsey looked back at Marko. He’d fallen too far behind as he struggled with and prodded Jeremy to move. Lindsey looked ahead toward the safe area. She and Teal wouldn’t make the two hundred-and-some yards before the chopper was on them. The tree line was closer. She steered Teal toward it. They could work their way to the safe area by winding among the bare, ice-laden trees and snowy evergreens.

“All team,” Tito said, “hide and wait. Only if things turn hostile do we use lethal force.”

Lindsey and Teal reached the trees and squatted under the low, drooping branches of a towering conifer to look for Marko. Grateful for the precise movements afforded by the rappelling gloves, Lindsey popped another cartridge in her Taser and pulled out her Beretta, as well.

She watched Marko yank Jeremy down next to the tree nearest the southwest corner of the chateau. And then the chopper loomed overhead, hovering while its pilot obviously considered the landing site. The pilot ignored the wide open field between O building and the road, a clear site that would have made anyone disembarking an easy target.

Instead it began descending over a spot that would put it in the center of a triangle formed by the coordinate points of Lindsey, Marko and the secure area. Letters on the side of the dark green military-type chopper appeared to be in Cyrillic.

“T-1 to T-3,” Tito said, “can you make the chopper?”

“It’s an H1-17 out of the Czech Republic. It could be Czech cops,” Ferris said.

“If only,” Tito said. “Can you guarantee that?”

“No. Only that it’s Czech. Don’t know who is in it.”

Tito added, “T-2, does this look like the chopper you saw last night?”

Marko answered, “Possibly. Same size and shape. Similar sound. But it was too dark for me to confirm absolutely.”

Teal tugged at Lindsey’s parka sleeve. “I don’t think it’s the police. There are very bad, evil feelings pouring out from the men in there.”

A look of bleakness darkened Teal’s eyes. Her face rippled into a frown. She was shivering in only a sweatshirt, jeans and tennis shoes. Lindsey stripped off her parka and put it on Teal and gave Teal the knit gloves on loan from the botanist. Lindsey’s adrenaline was running high, and the special gear she was carrying would help keep her plenty warm, though a part of her wondered how she could have even a drop of adrenaline left.

The chopper landed, its position slightly closer to Lindsey than to Marko or their secure area. “The girl thinks our visitors aren’t cops,” Lindsey said into her earwig as the side door of the chopper burst open, facing the chateau. The new arrivals were protected from everyone’s line of fire except Marko’sand he only had a handgun and a PepperBall launcher, nothing that could stop the armed men pouring out of the chopper door.

Six invaders moved out in silence and scattered, hunched over and running like vermin toward the building and along the walls. They all wore uniform gray parkas. The chopper kept its rotor turning while two men headed for the back of the chateau. Three others headed toward the front and would pass not thirty feet from Marko and Jeremy. One stayed near the chopper. All of them carried shields and AKM-47s.

The man guarding the outside of the chopper kept staring into the woods, almost as if he could see Lindsey and Teal, although at a hundred feet away, he surely couldn’t see into the snowy branches of the massive fir tree. “Don’t move,” she whispered to Teal.

And then she saw why the man seemed to be staring right at them. The early rays of the morning sun had risen to an angle that cast Lindsey’s and Teal’s deep footprints in the snow into sudden dark blue shadows, creating a path as clear as elephant tracks leading directly to them. Nonchalantly, he turned and walked toward the front of the chopper and then further on out toward the front of the chateau, as if he hadn’t noticed a thing. But surely he must have.

The two guards moving along the chateau’s rear wall disappeared around the far northwest corner. Lindsey relayed this to the team.

The chopper guard kept scanning the area in front of the chateau, and Lindsey could see his profile, lips moving rapidly. With his parka hood up, it was impossible to tell if he had an earwig, but he certainly could. She started thinking of all the signs of the struggle she’d been too intensely involved in to consider before: the smell of smoke, OC gas and explosives still in the air, craters the size of kiddie pools from the grenades, the many foot trails in the snow out front. Marko’s and Jeremy’s trail would jackknife back toward their meager hiding place at the tree. Marko surely had to know how vulnerable he and Jeremy were.

“This is T-1,” Tito said. “The three men that entered the chateau have exited the building after looking around. They may have talked to the men we secured in the basement. The other two who disappeared in back of the chateau are now unaccounted for. If these guys aren’t cops and are also after our package, we gotta hope they think they’re too late. Otherwise, the Neutron Dance is about to begin.”

Please keep this simple. Let it be cops. But they sure weren’t wearing cop uniforms. Or Czech military uniforms.

“T-1 to T-3. If these bandits make one wrong move, take out the chopper.”

“Copy,” Ferris answered.

“All team. The three in front are splitting up. One is heading to the garage, one

stepping off the drive area and into the snow toward the west fountain, the other toward the east fountain.”

What the hell were these guys doing?

Her attention snapped back to the man guarding the chopper. He jerked and she heard him speak. A split second later he dropped to the ground facing Marko’s tree and began firing his automatic at Marko and Jeremy. A steady barrage of weapon fire began in the front of the chateau, as well, magnified by all the earwigs also picking up the sound.

“Shit!” Marko said over the noise. “We’re taking fire from two points. We are pinned! Can’t hold out against two-point attack

shit!”

Lindsey heard a babble of sound, Ferris swearing mostly. Someone, probably Tia or Monique, was firing the Mk-48 at the chopper. The chopper pilot returned their fire.

Lindsey could also hear Jeremy’s intermittent voice in the staccato microseconds between bullets, hysterically swearing and accusing Marko and the Athena women of total incompetence.

What happened to the MGL-140? Marko was in extreme danger. She knew what needed doing, but the team must avoid hitting each other in crossfire. “This is T-7. Permission to take out chopper guard.”

Tito’s voice came on next. “Hold, T-7. T-3, where are the grenades?”

“Launcher’s frozen!” Ferris said. “I’m working on it.”

“Damn!” Tito said. “Okay, T-7. T-3, T-4, T-5, hold fire. T-7, proceed.”

“T-7, copy,” Lindsey answered. To Teal she said, “Stay right here,” and then she bolted out from the tree line running in a crouch, stun shield hanging on her left elbow, Taser in her left hand, Beretta in her right, aiming both at her target.

At thirty-some feet away from him, she saw him turn, in what seemed like uncanny timing. Too far for the Taser to work. It was shoot him or be mowed down. She fired the Beretta before the guard turned completely around, and hit him somewhere in the chest. He continued firing into the side wall of the chateau as he fell, not entirely disabled.

Closer now, she shot him in the right shoulder with the Taser. He spasmed and released the automatic. She dashed toward it and picked it up just as more automatic weapon fire sounded behind her. She dropped into the snow instantly, shield in front of her like a barricade.

Behind her?

Someone was firing from exactly where she’d left Teal.

God oh God oh God, please no

.

The helicopter, only forty feet away, lifted, blasting her with snow. It circled and headed for the tree line. In her earwig, the sound of steady gunfire from automatic weapons still sounded from the front of the chateau, somehow distinguishable over the noise of the chopper and the painful ringing in her ears. No chatter, though; Tito and Sam must be completely engaged in defending themselves and Marko.

“This is T-7,” Lindsey said, forcing herself to move beyond the sick fear she was feeling for Teal. She was about to tell Ferris, Tia and Monique to fire with everything they had at the chopper, but when she risked a peek over the shield, she watched with a sinking feeling as the copter landed near the fir tree where Teal waited. I should never have left her.

“This is T-3. MGL ready, fixed on chopper. Go or no go? Your call, T-7.”

Another hail of fire and Lindsey ducked down. She quickly popped up again and saw a shadowy figure dragging Teal from the giant fir and toward the chopper while a second man kept firing at Lindsey. This couldn’t be happening. Where had they come from?

But, of course, something in her had known the instant the chopper guard had turned to fire at her. The whole front operation at the chateau was a decoy to distract the Athena team from the two men who had disappeared, and, on cue from the chopper guard, who obviously had noted two sets of footprints in the snow, doubled back through the woods and found Teal.

Lindsey could see Teal struggling. The spunky girl jabbed her captor with something whitish, maybe an icicle. He released her and fell down. The man firing at Lindsey instantly stopped, turned and gun-butted Teal. She fell, and he scooped her up and carried her toward the chopper, his injured partner struggling to follow.

“Help!” Teal screamed.

“This is T-3, ready to take chopper out. Respond, T-7.”

Lindsey gasped. “No! Hold your fire, T-3. They have the girl on the chopper.”

Its blades thrusting snow in every direction, the chopper rose up and then flew over the chateau. Teal’s face was pressed against the small side window. A splotch of red stood out against the white of the borrowed parka. She put her hand against the glass as if trying to reach out to Lindsey. And then she was gone.

I lost her

lost her

it was my fault

.

Monique and Tia rushed down to secure the wounded chopper guard with unremarkable plastic ties. The idea of facing Monique and Tia and Samhaving to face anyoneseemed unbearable.

Heartsick, Lindsey headed toward Marko and Jeremy to see them rising, unscathed, from the snowy mound around the tree that had helped protect them in all the chaos of gunfirewhich had finally gone silent.

Her ears ached with the high-pitched ringing and felt like they were stuffed with packing popcorn. Everyone else apparently had the same problem because they were all shouting into the earwigs.

“That guy at the fountain fought like a crazed demon.” The voice sounded like Tito’s.

“I can’t believe they’re just leaving their dead and wounded.” This was Sam’s voice.

“All team,” Tito said. “Clean up everything that’s ours. Leave the rest. Whoever these shits are, they can try their own explaining to the Czech authorities. Not our problem. T-7, you’re closest. Help T-6 appropriate the remaining car in the garage. Double-quick.” This meant Lindsey and Sam should hot-wire the car if necessary. “The SUV was crowded coming out. Now we have another man with us, too. We don’t have to be crowded. Let’s take two cars back to the airport and then get the hell out of the country.”

Glad to focus on something other than how miserable she felt, Lindsey ran toward the garage as Tito ordered Marko to load Jeremy into the nearest vehicle, the one in the garage. As she ran, Lindsey saw Marko trip. Jeremy turned and ran, hands still cuffed behind him. What an idiot. Marko quickly tackled him. In the earwig, she heard Marko say, “Try that again and you’ll feel the effects of this stun shield. You won’t like it.”

Passing the fountain, she glanced at a dead man lying faceup and was shocked to recognize him. A bullet had bored into his left cheek and exited behind him, judging by the red pool of blood in the snow. The eyes in the face long scarred from an explosion stared up at nothing. Todor. He’d been so sure he was a part of greatness in the making. Maybe you’ll get a posthumous ribbon, you damn fool.

“All team. We proceed to airport ASAP. T-2, you ride with T-3 so you can upload the disks and report that we’ve lost the girl as we ride.”

“We have a big problem.” This was Ferris’s voice. “Chopper fire knocked out the secure satellite-direct computer. Upload is no go.”

Chapter 38

W hile Lindsey waited in one car outside the tobacco shop with Monique, Marko and Jeremy, Sam and the rest of Tito’s team waited in the SUV. Tito and Ferris had gone inside to use the computer to send Allison the disastrous news about Teal and to upload Jeremy’s disks.

Now, as they caravanned toward the airport, Lindsey wanted to go off somewhere, anywhere, to be by herself. Losing Teal was a crushing weight. A search of Jeremy had produced the key to the vehicle Lindsey rode in, making it unnecessary to break the lock and hot-wire the car. Monique was driving, and Marko sat in back with Lindsey, Jeremy between them.

She reminded herself that Allison and Christine now had the disks, that the op had at least saved sixteen other girls from Teal’s fate and saved the world from Jeremy’s cruel genetic manipulations. Having him sitting here beside her gave her the willies. And the image of Teal looking down at her from the chopper haunted her. A teenage girl shouldn’t have experiences that warranted such a bleak expression. How could I have fallen for that decoy?

“I need my medication,” Jeremy said. “I’m really not feeling well.”

“Some good news at last,” Marko said. “I hope you’re in so much pain your guts twist. In fact, I’d like an excuse to make your pain worse.”

“Boorish imbecile,” Jeremy muttered.

“This damn traffic!” Monique said. “I missed the green light. We’re cut off from Tito and the others. Do you remember the way to the airport?”

“Yeah,” Lindsey said, “if you take a left up ahead, you can bypass some of this mess.”

Monique turned off the main drag, drove a few blocks and turned again to proceed on a parallel course through the quaint streets of the city’s older parts. On the console, one of the secure cell phones rang. Monique handed Lindsey the receiver.

Sam said, “What’s going on? Where are you?”

“Bad traffic. But we’re coming.”

“I have more bad news. Allison just called me and said the disks are bogus.”

“Bogus! Are they sure? How can they possibly know so quickly?”

“Inconsistencies and nonsensical data were found on all four disks by the people who are thoroughly familiar with the Lab 33 procedures.”

Lindsey glared at Jeremy. “We already know the disks are bogus. I bet Tito is going to take you apart limb from limb. This team won’t leave this country without them.”

Jeremy looked as amazed as Lindsey felt and said, “They can’t be fake. I

Pietro

“

“Fake?” Marko said, echoing Jeremy.

“It seems the disks Jeremy had on him are worthless.”

Another blow. No Teal. No disks. Only this repulsive creature sitting next to her. Think! Think! A failure so great was simply not acceptable. “We need to have another chat with our captive,” Lindsey said, leaning over to look at both Jeremy and Marko meaningfully. “We may be delayed,” she said to Sam. “We’ll meet up with you at the airport. I’ll keep you posted.” Lindsey ended the call.

A gleam came into Marko’s eyes. “Do I get to mangle this piece of canal scum?”

Lindsey nodded slowly, squinting at Jeremy, who studied the bindings on his wrists. He didn’t look particularly crestfallen, not like a man who’d been robbed of something incredibly valuable. Another idea occurred to her. If Pietro had somehow double-crossed Jeremy, then Pietro might have the genuine disks. “Monique, have you checked the location of the car you tagged?”

“Ah, no. I didn’t know the man inside was a priority any longer. You want me to check?”

“Yeah.”

Monique multitasked, driving and pushing buttons on her GPS tracker. Suddenly she swore. “According to the GPS tracker, the car I tagged is about two cars behind us!”

Jeremy gasped. “How can that be?”

The street narrowed, traffic decreased. Ancient buildings cast shadows everywhere despite the brightness of morning sun reflecting off snowy roofs.

“I see the car in my side mirror,” Monique said. “The guy who got away at the chateau

what’s his name?”

“Pietro,” Jeremy said.

“A gun!” Monique blurted. “Get down!”

Lindsey ducked down, along with Marko and Jeremy.

“He’s passed one of the cars behind us

now he’s passing the next guy. Hang on!” Monique swerved into a sudden right. Probably thinking to fool the driver behind her, she swerved into a hard right again and hit the gas.

Lindsey was thrown against the door and Jeremy leaned into her. Repulsed, she shoved him away.

“What the hell?” Monique shrieked and slammed on the brakes.

Lindsey peeked over the top of the seat to see a very familiar black limo, the one that last night had chased her and Zuza. As if the limo driver had known where they were headed, it pulled into the oncoming traffic, blocking Monique’s ability to pass. Lindsey twisted and looked behind. The car with SlickPietrobore down at high speed. She caught a fleeting glimpse of the passenger behind the driver, the profile of a big man. It could only be

“Pietro and Foo Hai are behind us. They are together,” she yelled. “Those are Foo Hai’s henchmen in the limo.”

“Run for it!” Monique yelled, sliding across the console to throw open the front passenger door. She bolted out, squatted, and immediately drew silenced gunfire, the only indication of firing being the pinging sounds of the bullets against the car’s metal.

Marko, also on the passenger side, leaped out and dragged Jeremy out by the handcuffs and they crouched behind the open rear door. Lindsey slid toward them and Marko pulled her out, too.

“That way!” Lindsey called and pointed to an alley behind them.

Scrambling together like flushed rabbits, they ducked into the first cross alleyway they came to, and then ran along the back of a public building. Lindsey pointed to a stairwell descending below ground level. At the bottom a door stood ajar.

Their pursuers rounded the corner, firing, Foo Hai in the lead. If Pietro had Jeremy’s genuine disks, why were these guys here? It had to be that Jeremy was lying to everyone. He had given Lindsey fake disks, but Pietro didn’t have the real disks, either.

Lindsey dashed down the stairs with the other three following. Monique cried out suddenly. Lindsey looked back. “I’m okay.” She motioned that Lindsey should keep going.

Inside the building, Lindsey slammed the door behind them. A janitor appeared, yelled at them and pointed to the door.

“He’s saying the museum hasn’t opened yet,” Jeremy said, eyes darting as he scanned the room.

“Don’t even think of bolting,” Marko said.

“You can’t let them get me,” Jeremy wailed. He seemed to be hyperventilating. “Foo Hai will torture me.”

It suddenly occurred to Lindsey that Jeremy was a thorough coward. He was losing it. So, given her own impression of Foo Hai as one extremely dangerous predator, she wasn’t at all surprised that Jeremy would be deathly afraid of the dark, silent Asian.

Monique staggered and then fell. “My leg

“

A growing red patch was spreading on the thigh of her snow-camo pants below a round half-inch hole. The shocked janitor started speaking frantically in Czech.

Pounding noises came from the door. Their pursuers were kicking it.

Wide-eyed, the janitor pointed toward the other end of the room and spoke rapidly.

Weakly, Monique said, “I can’t make it. You have to go.”

The door rattled with the assault from outside.

“I’m okay here,” Monique said. “Go!”

Marko scooped her up and carried her to a partial hiding place, a small chamber behind a display of some kind of contraption. He set her down gently. Dear God! The contraption was an ancient torture device. Lindsey glanced about and was stunned to see medieval weapons and, just beyond, skulls grinning at her.

The spitfire of silenced guns sounded outside and bullets pelted the door.

Chapter 39

“T hat way!” Jeremy pointed to a sign above a door in the opposite wall that Lindsey imagined probably said Exit. He ran toward the door.

The janitor called something after him.

“We’ll come back as soon as we can,” Lindsey said to Monique and then hurried after Marko, who was chasing Jeremy.

This museum was bizarre. Human skulls were used decoratively with other human bones in design structures. It looked like an ossuary for interior decorators. She dashed past an armchair-sized bell made entirely of skulls and bones and hanging next to a chandelier constructed from the same grisly building blocks. Beside the exit door hung a shield with bones forming a coat of arms.

How sick is this?

Gunshots, even though fired through a silencer, sounded louder than before. Foo Hai was in the building. In horror, Lindsey saw reflected in one of the fish-eye security mirrors positioned at the corners of the room the janitor with his hands raised. Foo Hai shot the man in the throat, then pointed down at the floor where Monique lay and fired again.

F-ing bastard! Lindsey’s cheeks burned with fury and helpless frustration.

Jeremy pushed the bar handle down. An alarm clanged. Lindsey and Marko rushed through the doorway following him. One of four messages on the door was in English and a fragment registered as she passed. STOP. This exit is for extreme emergency only. This museum cannot be responsible for

The door shut silently. Aided by only a single dim orange mercury light above the museum door behind them, they scurried along in near darkness under a curved corrugated ceiling surrounded by storage crates. Ten feet from the door, a pipe railing was all that prevented someone from walking off an edge into blackness below. She couldn’t see if the drop was five feet, fifty feet, or bottomless.

Five feet beyond the beginning of the rail another dim orange light revealed looming structures vaguely resembling an underground parking garage, except that the spaces between the levels were far too low. The place looked like it might be a condemned mausoleum. The frigid air smelled of dankness and decay. They scrambled down one flight of narrow stairs.

“Where the hell are we?” Marko pulled out a small but high-beam flashlight from his pocket. The orange light was now exceedingly faint.

“Look for the tunnel

” Jeremy said, hyperventilating as he tried to speak. “The janitor said

” Gasp “

something about this being

” Gasp “

an old bomb shelter and there’s

” Gasp “

a tunnel through the old ruins. An exit.”

That poor hapless janitor. Probably dead. And Monique! But they must race on. More stairs descended on either side of a dark chasm.

“Right or left?” she asked.

Jeremy’s gasp was almost a sob. “I don’t know. How could things have gone so badly?” He was panting. “I planned everything so carefully.”

Lindsey hated agreeing with Jeremy on anything, but he was right. She could make out old yellow warning tape stretched in front of them with a message in Czech. Probably, danger repeated over and over.

She led left and they moved quickly but carefully along the tape, which simply ended, trailing an unhelpful sash over the edge of the chasm. Marko jerked the tape off the rail, crumpled it, and stuffed it in his pocket.

“Souvenir?” Lindsey asked.

“Maybe Foo Hai and his men will run off the edge,” Marko said.

Jeremy nodded frantically. “That would be good. Yes, very good.” He now seemed close to babbling. “That greasy Italian lowlife criminal has betrayed me. I just knew I shouldn’t trust him. I knew. I knew.”

Here the greenish glow of bioluminescent spores and mushrooms spread along the base of the multilayered mausoleum-like structure on the other side of the ditch. There must be a lot of rotting wood, Lindsey decided. This place looked like it was a cave-in waiting to happen. Less than twenty feet above her head she could see barely discernible features of an old bridge or aqueduct. Was this now supporting a modern street or parking lot? The thought was not reassuring.

In the distance ahead, a single drop of water dripped into what sounded like a pool in an echoing tunnel. They moved as fast as the scary dimness allowed toward the sound. Another dim, flickering orange light revealed a low Romanesque archway.

“That way.” Lindsey stepped forward, but as she put her weight down, she slipped and crunched through an icy surface into black, vile-smelling water that found its way through her boot to her foot. The odors around the frigid puddle intensified into smells of mold. And a swampy methane smell. A spiderweb brushed her cheek, and she shivered and clenched her teeth to swallow back a scream.

“Move closer to the wall.” Marko flashed his tight beam of light along ancient stone with nooks and crannies that probably harbored slithery things. She heard the squeaking of rats from somewhere distressingly nearby. The beam traveled up and across ancient wood and cross-timbers as if they’d entered a basement several centuries oldwhich they probably had. Bendrich had said that old Prague was built on layers of ruins people hadn’t bothered to deconstruct. Marko especially would have to duck to pass under the old, sagging, creaking beams.

“I think I’m going to faint,” Jeremy gasped.

Lindsey shared the feeling, but would bite off and eat her tongue before she would admit it. Where was that archway? It had disappeared. Her only guide was the occasional drop of water, its sound magnified in the echo of what had to be the tunnel the guard had mentioned.

The sound of the alarm from inside the museum above grew loud. Lindsey, Jeremy and Marko all stopped and looked behind them. The emergency door had opened, maybe the length of a city block away, casting a quick flash of weak light on the layers of past civilizations and on the silhouettes of Foo Hai, his henchmen and Pietro, their mutterings muffled but audible.

Lindsey hardly breathed as she, Marko and Jeremy crept toward where she thought she had seen the archway. A gun fired and the bullet zinged off a stone behind them and then another.

“Sweet Madonna! How could they have known so quickly that we chose this direction?” Marko whispered. “How could they have found us at all?”

Mercifully the archway appeared again, revealed by a strangely iridescent, blue-purple glowing ball that shifted

and then was gone.

Every hair on Lindsey’s head stood up.

“What the hell was that?” Marko asked.

“I think

” Jeremy panted. “I mean, I thought

that Pietro might have put a bug on my car.” Jeremy evidently hadn’t seen the strange light. “But now

” Gasp. “I think it’s me. In my jacket pocket.” He pulled out something that looked like a vitamin capsule.

Marko slammed Jeremy against the stone wall, snatched the unit and pitched it like a bowling ball along the ground behind them. It immediately drew fire.

Bullets must have hit something that released a gassy methane odor, because the air ignited with a boom. Behind her, stone and brick rained down. The floor was suddenly moving as terrified rats scurried toward who knew where.

A wooden beam above Marko creaked and broke. Rocks tumbled from the walls beside her. Water gushed from somewhere, smelling a thousand years old. An ancient cistern? Here and there, pockets of flame burned greenish.

Marko was nowhere in sight. And no Jeremy, either. Lindsey crouched, hand over her nose to keep out still-descending dust, climbed up a step and peeked over the top of rubble now blocking the way back to the museum entrance.

His back against the remains of the stone wall, Jeremy stood on the other side, a look of sheer terror holding his eyes wide open. A stocky Asian man jumped over a beam that pinned down another man and ran up to an apparently paralyzed Jeremy, gun-butted him and dragged him backward.

In the light of the green fires, Lindsey recognized the spiderweb tattoo on Pietro’s neck as he struggled against the weight of the beam pressing down on him. Blood, that in this dim light looked black, ran from his mouth. Pietro was in big trouble. Probably a crushed spleen. He wasn’t going to be walking out of here on his own

if at all.

“Hey! Foo Hai! Help me out here! You owe me!” he called out.

Foo Hai stepped out of the shadows, smiled, raised a gun, aimed it at Pietro’s chest and fired. Pietro died with a look of rage pasted on his face.

Foo Hai signaled two men to move the beam blocking their way, and as they did so, Foo Hai shoved Pietro into the chasm with his foot. Pietro dropped in, followed quickly by the sound of a splash.

“Marko?” she whispered. She turned, backed down from the rubble mound and stared into the dimness. “Marko?”

A groan issued from the chasm. The rock avalanche that separated her from Foo Hai and Jeremy had taken Marko over the ledge. Water continued to pour into the trench or whatever it was. She crawled to the edge and called down. “Marko? Are you okay?”

“Nnnnn

help me

“

He couldn’t be more than five or six feet below her, but things were crawling up out of the crevice. Spiders. Dozens of them. One climbed onto her sleeve. She jumped up and flicked it off to see three climbing up her leg. She flapped at them, kicked in a blind frenzy that left her shaking and sickened, sweating and clammy. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

She turned toward the archway and ran. Blindly, heart beating wildly. She tripped on something and fell. She scrambled to her feet and thought, What am I doing?

She couldn’t leave anyone here, and especially not Marko. She turned back, made her feet move. She’d failed at everything she’d set out to do on this trip. Teal gone, and now, coward that she was, she had come close to abandoning Marko.

Foo Hai had probably killed Monique and the janitor and he now had Jeremy and would soon unleash Jeremy’s brand of evil into the world. Oh, Teal, I’m so sorry

What would the Kestonians do with Teal? And Marko

.

She teetered at the edge of the dark chasm, her heart pounding so hard in her chest, it seemed about to burst. Pain gripped her insides and she doubled over and groaned, fighting the need to vomit, shaking uncontrollably, unable to take a step or even think.

Chapter 40

“L indsey!”

Marko’s voice sounded strong, and it reached Lindsey like a lifeline.

“I’m here

I’m coming,” she answered.

She would rather be dead than have things end this way. Nothing, not Foo Hai, not the spiders, nothing could be worse. Hating herself for her cowardice, and still shaking, she crawled to the ledge, scrunching small, hairy things underneath her as she moved. She could hear water still rushing into the dark void.

By the light of the nearest rubble fire, Lindsey saw something that could help. A stout plank. The remnants of some ancient footbridge, maybe. Perhaps a foot and a half wide, six inches thick and eight feet long, the plank spanned the crevice where it narrowed, just a few feet away from Marko. Like the whole damn place, the plank was alive with spiders. Webs hung from it like curtains. She crawled to it, dragged it over to her side, knocked off some of the webs and tiny scurrying bodies and dragged it back toward Marko.

She extended one end of the plank down to him and heard it hit water. He started sloshing around. “Will it help?”

“It’s a beautiful board,” he said. “Got to dig myself out a bit. A mother-bitch of a hunk of stonework has my ankle pinned. Where’s Jeremy?”

“Foo Hai has him.” Swatting spiders and fighting nausea, she told Marko what had happened. While he grunted, strained and cussed in Italian, she noticed what looked to be a light far off to her right. Maybe the exit.

“Hold the noise down,” she said. “I don’t think they can escape back the way we all came in. They will eventually climb past this rubble to come here. That will take them some time. I see a light. But we may not have much time. I keep hearing more rocks fall into this crevicewhatever it is.”

“Antique shit hole.”

She actually giggled, partly amused and partly out of nervousness. “Yeah, this place is toxic. Green mushrooms don’t grow in places that are optimal for humans.” She recalled a science class in which the professor said that Scandinavians used to mark their way through the forests using smears of glow-in-the-dark spores. Hmmm

In the distance, another boom let loose and a bright, fiery green glow spread through this hideous underworld then snuffed out. Doubtless another pocket of gas exploding. Maybe Foo Hai’s efforts to find a way out had triggered it. “We need to exit, Marko. Fast.”

Think! How could they get out, get away? How could she recapture Jeremy? Jeremy must have the genuine data on the Lab 33 procedures and the sixteen modified girls hidden safely somewhere.

Marko groaned again. “The water’s up to my neck. It’s so cold I can hardly move, but it keeps the pain from

. Aaaughhh!” Marko splashed wildly, angled the plank, hoisted himself up and caught Lindsey’s arm. He was waterlogged and heavy, but he clambered up onto the ledge. He lay there shivering. She threw herself on top of him, embraced him, shaking even more violently than he was. “Thank you, God,” she whispered. “Are you okay? Can you wiggle your feet?”

Marko moved his right foot and then as he moved the left one he winced. But then he grinned at her. “I will work around it.”

At that moment, Lindsey knew something, a precious something that she could only tuck into her heart since the timing was so rotten. Yet this new certainty stopped her shaking. She would do anything, give her life, to get him out of this place.

“I have only one bullet left. You?” she asked.

“Wet gun. Ammo long gone.”

“Hold on to me while I lean over the edge and retrieve that beautiful’ board. I have an idea.”

“One of those American so-crazy-it-just-might-work ideas?”

“Yeah. One of those,” she said. Foo Hai must be feeling as desperate to escape this cold hell as Lindsey was. A quick recon revealed that the light farther on indeed entered from an exit. But they needed Jeremy. The opening was passable, but she and Markowho, though limping badly, uttered not one word of complaintset blocks in front of the opening so that no light shone in. The way out would not draw attention.

She began to smear little dabs of dimly glowing spores to mark where she laid the plank across the chasm. No one could pass by here and not see this little glowing trail and footbridge.

She hoped it looked as if locals might sometimes use the plank. Surely, Foo Hai would reason, there would not be a plank across the chasm unless it led to somewhere, and that somewhere would most likely have an exit. He would have to at least try it.

The plank actually dead-ended. There was no exit on this side. They took up ambush positions, Marko on top of a beam that overlooked the path and Lindsey squatting down behind a half-fallen stone wall. Lindsey had secured the Danger tape to the end of the plank and entirely covered the tape with peaty dirt. The other end of the tape she held in her hand.

With glowing fingers, she waited and watched and listened. After an excruciating three or four minutes, she heard whispers. No more than thirty feet away. The men were past the rockfall now and should soon reach the plank. The still-burning fire above revealed two Asians, followed by Jeremy, followed by Foo Hai.

They stopped. Argued. A flunky came across first. Jeremy kept saying that he refused to cross the plank, but Foo Hai aimed a big Glock at him and, of course, he did. Next came the second flunky, and then Foo Hai. The minute he was across, Lindsey yanked on the Danger tape, drawing the plank to her and off the crevice. The four men, stunned, turned toward the chasm and stared.

Marko, a stone the size of a grapefruit in his hand, dropped onto one of the Asians. The lackeys were his responsibility. Lindsey stood and aimed the Beretta at Foo Hai and commanded, “Drop your!”

But before she could finish the sentence, he was firing. She heard Jeremy scream as she placed a neat shot between Foo Hai’s eyes.

Foo Hai fell. Marko had bashed the first blackguard immediately into unconsciousness. He was rolling, struggling with the second thug, then bashed him into unconsciousness, as well. Jeremy had fallen onto the floor and kept screaming.

“Shut up, Jeremy,” she shouted.

He obeyed, but he lay bleeding and moaning.

From behind, Marko gave her the biggest, strongest bear hug she would probably ever feel. He pulled back and winked. “Do we really need to bother with Jeremy? He’s obviously going to die here. I say we leave him.”

“You can’t leave me,” Jeremy shrieked.

“Why shouldn’t we?” Lindsey asked, staring down at Jeremy in disgust. “I think Marko is right. You deserve to be left in this dark hole to bleed to death.”

She stepped away from Jeremy. “Let’s go.” She bent to the plank and placed it back across the dark chasm.

“You can’t leave me.”

“Sure we can,” Marko said, sounding quite happy.

Lindsey stepped onto the plank. Jeremy howled. “No. Wait. Take me to a doctor. I will give you the information. All of it.”

Jeremy, who had been clutching his wounded leg, fumbled to make the leg bend and then fumbled with the heel of his shoe. It pivoted open and he took out what Lindsey immediately recognized as a flash drive.

She returned to stand over him. “You lied before. How can we know this isn’t just another trick? I’m telling you, Jeremy, that if you don’t convince me you’re telling the truth, we’ll take your flash drive and then leave you here.”

Jeremy’s hands, covered with blood, were back on his wound. Lindsey wasn’t sure now whether the wound was superficial, as she originally thought, or if he in fact might be seriously hurt. “I suggest you talk quickly.”

“I swear, this is what you want. Names. Identities. Talents. Locations. All the genetic procedures. Would I have left this behind? No!”

“How did you set up the kidnapping? To tell you the truth, Jeremy, you don’t seem like a particularly capable criminal.”

“It wasn’t me, not really. There is someone. A blackmailer. Someone who knows all about Aldrich and his lab. After the lab went down, I contacted this person, at first pretending to be Aldrich. I thought I might develop the same kind of mutually beneficial relationship with him. I was stupid. I thought their relationship had been profitable and amicable. But this bastard has been blackmailing me ever since. He put me in contact with the Colombians.”

Excited, sure that he was telling the truth and that this was information that Christine and Allison didn’t know, Lindsey leaned close to Jeremy. “What’s his name?”

“I don’t know his name. He only identifies himself as A.”

Another lie. Lindsey scoffed and stood. “Let’s leave him.”

“Please, no! I swear on my life I do not know his name. I have never met him. He signs e-mails and faxes only with the letter A and there is always a spider image or spiderweb on them.”

Did she believe this? Jeremy was panicked, afraid he was dying, and he’d given up the flash drive, which Lindsey did believe held the genuine information. That he didn’t even know who was blackmailing him actually had the ring of truth.

“I buy it, Linds,” Marko said, confirming her judgment.

She nodded. Marko used two plastic handcuffs to make a tourniquet. Toting Jeremy in a fireman’s carry, Marko lugged the twisted scientist across the plank, then, supporting Jeremy between them, they made their way to the tunnel opening. She called Sam to pick them up. She figured Tito and his team would be on their way out of the country and Sam and Jeremy would be on a military plane back to the States within the hour.

Chapter 41

A t 11:05 a.m., Lindsey leaned on the corridor wall while Marko used the key card to her hotel room and opened the door. He held it for her. Just pulling herself from the wall required extreme effort, but she managed it and walked inside, beyond exhausted, too wired to relax, shaky with adrenaline letdown, sore in a hundred places, weak, so hungry she probably couldn’t eat, as thirsty as if she’d been in a desert, and worst of all, still feeling like a worthless failure over losing Teal. K-bar’s deep voice boomed in her memory, “We’ll have to talk about what you could have done differently.”

Marko followed her in and let the door close. “Want to talk?” he asked. “Or do you want to be alone?”

Alone? God, no. I want to sit on your lap and have you rock me to sleep. But she was a sullen wretch and probably looked like hell. Why would anyone want to be with her? Especially after going through the same ordeal. Marko had sprained his ankle and said he had bruises in eighty places. If he didn’t want to stay, though, he wouldn’t have let that door close.

“I don’t want to be alone.”

He stepped in, eyes fixed on her, reading her. Bless him. He had to feel like more of a mess than she didat least physically. He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, a grimy, dirt-encrusted hand that matched hers.

“Want a drink?” she asked.

“Sounds great.” He took off his parka and dropped it on the floor.

She stripped off her borrowed parka, tossing it on the chair at the window. She grabbed a water bottle off a table and sank into the chair. “Make mine strong. Double scotch.”

As she gulped water, the image of Teal’s face in the helicopter’s window flashed into Lindsey’s mind yet again. Anguish immediately struck her heart. Teal’s being snatched away again was simply too hard to bear. She extinguished the image by focusing on Marko’s profile as he stood at the bar.

Her duties were not yet over, however, and she used a secure cell phone, freshly supplied by Bendrich, and punched in Allison’s number. Allison knew already from Sam that they had lost Teal again. Mercifully, Lindsey wasn’t required to go over the sickening, embarrassing, sad details of her failure. “I wanted to talk with you personally,” she said to Allison, “about the issue of Jeremy’s blackmailer, this mysterious A.”

“Sam briefed me. I’ve talked it over with key insiders, including Christine. The connection to A is an astonishing and profoundly important discovery, Lindsey. Since the takedown of Lab 33, we’ve known about this woman who is called a number of names, but is mostly known as Arachne. Just as she did with Jeremy, if she identifies herself at all she uses the letter A, and all communications from her that we’ve been able to get our hands on concluded with the spiderweb Jeremy described.”

“A is a woman?” She felt surprise at first, but then a strange, inexplicable sense of correctness.

“Yes. She seems bent on bringing down the Academy. Most details about her are closely held, but I can tell you that even though we don’t know yet who she is, let alone how to stop her, what you’ve found out confirms that she has something to do with Lab 33 and that her influence continues to spread.”

Exhaustion was hitting hard now. Lindsey said goodbye. Marko handed her the drink. She took one good slug, then said, “I’m going to shower and then I have to lie down. Stay

if you’d like.” The thought of Marko leaving evoked a panic that clutched her threat. “I want you here with me.”

He gave her a gentle smile and plunked himself with a sigh onto the edge of her bed. Carrying the drink with her, she headed for the shower. When she finished and came out, smelling like a fresh apricot, Marko rose and headed for his own cleanup. She lay down on top of the bed, expecting that they would talk after he was clean and comfortable.

Lindsey woke suddenly, totally disoriented. Was it day? Night? Where was she?

“Cara mia, you are so damn beautiful.”

Marko, who had apparently been watching her sleep, stroked a finger across her forehead.

Prague. Warm room with a fire in her lovely ceramic stove. Teal still missing. Lindsey’s fault. She felt tears welling. They spilled warmly onto her cheeks.

“Don’t cry, cara mia.”

Marko kissed her. Softly at first, but then he gently inserted his tongue into her mouth, as if he might gently invade her body in another way, and began to explore. At first sadness held her back, but his passion, the tenderness of his hands as they caressed her neck and shoulders, proved irresistible. Life-affirming.

She wrapped her arms around his naked torso and responded, wildly returning the kiss and groaning. She needed this release. Wanted it. Had craved melding with Marko for days.

His hand slid over a breast and his lips soon kissed where his palm had caressed. She moaned again and sighed his name. “Marko.”

He kissed her other breast that ached for the touch of his lips. “Oh, yes.”

With one hand he spread her legs slightly and then he used the lightest of touches to stroke the inside of her thigh.

The wonderful burning deep in her belly flared and she ran her fingers into his hair and pulled. “You want me?” Marko asked.

“Yes. Yes.”

“Not too soon. You’ll like the waiting for it.”

His kisses moved slowly down her belly, kissing, licking. Pushing slightly on his head, both hands now in his hair, she encouraged him to go lower.

When he finally spread her legs even further, she felt any sense of him and herself slipping away. There was only the delicious, intimate licking. “Uuugh,” she moaned. “Ohhh.”

She was on the verge of exploding right then but he sat up over her, opened and rolled on a condom that had been lying on the sheet beside them. For a moment the magic became reality again and she knew he’d planned this. And that was good, too.

She helped him inside and the slow rhythm of lovemaking began until his body grew slick and the speed of their movements together increased. She was losing herself. Losing

The climax took her and she sensed he’d come, too.

The next time Lindsey woke, Marko lay beside her, one arm resting across her belly. She moved, intending to slip away to the bathroom a moment before returning to him. She didn’t want to wake him. He surely needed rest.

But at her first slight movement, he awoke immediately. He grinned at her. She grinned back, and they kissed.

“Want to go again?” he asked.

“You?”

“I will if you will.”

Her stomach growled. They laughed out loud. She said, “Don’t you want to sleep?”

“No. I have never felt more alive.” He sat up in the bed beside her. “I’m totally awake.” He seemed to be glowing with happiness. She could tellMarko was projecting into the future, thinking that maybe Lindsey could be the one.

She turned her head away from him. “I keep going over things I might have done, should have done, to keep them from taking Teal. K-bar would have a thousand complaints.”

He took her chin and made her look at him. “You know, I just thought you might be doing that. There wasn’t a thing you could have done differently, Linds.”

“Maybe.”

Again her stomach growled. He rolled over her and onto his feet. “We need food. You need to have your thoughts distracted. Let’s dress and go out.”

“What time is it?”

Marko bent over the small clock on the bedside stand. “7:30.”

He was right. Getting out of the room would be distracting, and she was wide-awake. They dressed warmly and left the hotel.

As they had done with their ice displays in OldTown, ice festival participants had set up brightly lit statues the entire length of the boulevard leading to the NationalMuseum. She and Marko crossed the street, dodging still-active traffic. “I bought a wurst that was damn good,” Marko said. “Maybe we can find the guy again.”

They passed a beautiful and intriguing sculpture depicting “The Firebird and Ivan in the Garden of Golden Apples.” Spotlights of flickering gold and red tones made the gorgeous ice phoenix seem to be truly on fire. Marko especially liked the next sculpture depicting a “rusalka,” a pre-Christian lusty female forest spirit with abundant wild hair curlicuing around huge naked breasts. Her head was thrown back in laughter.

When they passed a tender scene of “The Lady in White” teaching young Bethushka, a child who is supposed to be spinning flax, to dance, Marko said, “You would make a wonderful mother, Linds.”

She let the comment pass.

Her cell phone rang. They had found the vendor Marko was seeking. “Have him put lots of mustard on mine,” she said, and then answered the phone. The caller’s number she knew belonged to Christine Evans.

“We want to keep you posted, Lindsey. Teal has sent images and feelings to Stefan. She seems strong and determined again. Images were of a man with a terribly ugly, scarred face, and then of the inside of a plane or helicopterand on the control panel is a Kestonian flag. She knows we will be looking for her now. And this must be her way to ask for our help.”

“Put me on follow-up. I’m ready to go after her. Right now.”

Marko, holding wursts in both fists, said, “Tell her I’ll go with you.”

“My colleague, Marko Savin, is with me. He’s also ready to roll.”

“I’ll keep you, and Marko, in mind for backup. But getting into Kestonia is going to be extremely tricky, and I have a perfect Athena grad who should be able to do so without suspicion. But be assured, we are on it here, and either I or Allison will keep you posted.”

After Lindsey snapped the phone shut, Marko handed her her wurst and grinning, said, “I’ll go anywhere with you.”

“Christine said they are sending someone else.” Lindsey couldn’t keep her despair out of her voice.

“Linds. Cara mia. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She bit into the wurst, her mouth watering with the taste of mustard and spices. They moved away from the vendor, strolling slowly among the crowd past the sculptures. They passed a violin player and accordionist playing a sweet tune, entertaining to make a few euros from tips.

“You sound

so sad.”

“The Kestonians have Teal! And now Allison has refused to put me onto the trail. I failed. And I’m a

” She couldn’t bear to say “coward” out loud. “I almost wasn’t able to pull myself together to figure out a way to help you.”

“But you did. I heard you gagging with fear. I felt your shakes. But I don’t think it’s what you think it is. It’s just your body’s way of telling you that you’re forcing yourself.”

“I shouldn’t have to force myself, goddamn it!”

He stopped walking and captured her gaze. “But look at what youwehave accomplished. Sixteen young girls are safe because of what you did. And Loschetter’s instructions for making these extraordinary girls was kept out of really bad hands.”

“I’m a fraud, Marko. I was scared spitless in that hellacious underground place.”

“Who wasn’t? You are human, not a robot. But you know what, Linds, I think you are a bit of a fraud.”

She hadn’t expected him to agree, not really. She felt a prick of anger.

After the briefest pause, Marko went on. “It’s not that you lack courage, though, which is what you seem to be thinking. You have plenty of courage. You saved me twice this morning. Those guys with the automatics would have nailed me if you hadn’t stopped the one by the chopper. You figured a way to pull me out of the ditch. You took on Foo Hai. You had a huge fear, and you beat it. But I think you fight your true nature.”

“Which is?”

“You’re an artist, Linds. I’ve been asking myself over and over, why does she do this stuff? You aren’t like me. A sort of adrenaline freak. All this crazy daredevil stuff isn’t your first choice. If you could be totally honest with yourself, you might quit it.”

“What nonsense are you talking?”

“I think the far-out risk-taking goes way back. To prove to K-bar that you are as tough as any son he could have had.”

She started to spit out some kind of angry protest, but he smiled at her, a gentle smile. A smile that also seemed to be saying, I accept you as you really are.

So instead of yelling at him, she thought a moment about her relationship to her father, to the tough K-bar she knew her father to be. There was truth in Marko’s comments. She could admit that. “When I saw all those spiders, for a few minutes I was four years old again,” Lindsey said. “We were camping at night and my parents told me not to move and set me down on a rock and went to get firewood. I was so scared I started shaking. A spider crawled onto me, and I screamed my lungs out. My father came racing back and looked disgusted. No daughter of mine is afraid of such things,’ he said. I’ve just always had this terror of spiders.”

“You sure pushed past that down in the third level of Hades.”

“Yeah.” Lindsey smiled, suddenly self-conscious. “I did. I guess I’ve always felt that I was unlovable unless I was an all-out thrill freak.”

“You don’t need to be a daredevil. You don’t need to prove anything to anybody. You proved that you could do whatever it takes long ago. And you sure as hell are no coward.”

“You don’t understand. It’s not just that I get

scared. I love the thrills. I love the excitement. I’ve, well, it’s not like I haven’t thought about

I just don’t think I could give it up now. I’m hooked, too.”

“I think I do understand. And who says you have to give up all thrills and excitement? We could still ski and skydive and scuba. Hell, we can go climb mountains together. Dozens of things for adventure. There are lots of thrills and excitement that don’t involve risking your life by confronting people who might try to kill you.”

“Marko”

“How about taking the risk to be more honest about who you are? Dare to be you. The wonderful artist that you are is good enough for anyoneeven K-bar.”

The fiddler and the accordion player stopped close by, playing now for her and Marko. They were playing the French love song, “Plaisir d’Amour.” She thought of its first lines, “The joys of love are but a moment long.”

Longing welled up, nearly choking her. She loved Marko. She’d known it beyond a doubt when she helped him out of that crevice. She suspected that he might love her. And it seemed that he understood her maybe better than she understood herself. She’d been on a very long daredevil journey. Maybe it was time, now, to step onto a different road. She knew that someday she wanted a deeper life of family and commitment. She wanted that joy of love that the songs all sang about, even if only for a short time. Was it really possible to have it both ways? Excitement and responsibility?

“What do you think, Linds? Am I right?” Marko put a euro in the tin cup their serenaders held out.

She took Marko’s arm and then another bite of the scrumptious wurst as they began to walk together again. “Yeah. You are.”

Why not make some changes? She could follow her heart, fully and completely.

She could start by eliminating the extreme, high-risk stuff she did just to prove she could. Just thinking about letting that part of her life go felt right. Felt easy. She did have commitments, though. She would take dangerous Athena assignments, but only when the stakes would justify risking her lifethe life of someone who was loved and needed.

They’d circled back around to the ice sculpture of the wild and lusty “rusalka,” her head thrown back in laughter.

“So,” he said, “here’s something to think about risking. Admit that you love me. I dare you.”

Even though K-bar admired Marko, he would protestat least at first, but she’d outlast him, wear him down. Lindsey tilted her chin up, matching the same confident angle as the rusalka, smiled at Marko and drew him closer. Challenge accepted.