Dangerous Passion (26 page)

The sniper was still shooting at a steady pace, but had started to shoot into other rooms, hoping for a random hit.

A section of the wall slid open and Grace helped him into the elevator, still dragging the trolley. He found it almost impossible to pick up his feet and if it hadn’t been for Grace’s arm around his waist, he would have fallen.

He couldn’t fall. If he fell, he’d never get up again.

She didn’t need further instructions. Drake was blessed in having fallen in love with an intelligent woman. She didn’t tempest him with questions or idle comments. His strength was ebbing second to second, and he had to conserve it.

They were in deep trouble. She understood that and didn’t waste their resources.

If he’d had the strength, he would have kissed her.

The bottom dropped out of the world. The elevator was an emergency exit and had been designed to fall as fast as possible, faster than safety regulations allowed. In seconds they were in the basement.

Drake kept his fleet of vehicles in a walled-off section of the basement to the right that only he or his men had access to, but kept his secret getaway vehicle separate. Slot 58 was to the left.

He opened his mouth to croak out
Go left
, when he saw that Grace had already figured out the number system. The slot was close by. It was pointless having a quick getaway car far from the emergency elevator.

Even moving sluggishly, feet dragging, they were at the Tahoe in seconds, Grace unlocking the doors with the key fob from five feet away. Instead of heading for the driver’s side, she opened the passenger side door first.

Drake shook his head, resisting.

If enemies were coming after them, she had to get in first and, if necessary, pull away without him.

He tried to say it. “Get…in…first.” His lungs were heaving, his voice was hoarse. He was clinging to the doorframe with shaking fingers.

She didn’t pay any attention at all, simply pushed and prodded until he half fell in. She shoved his legs in, threw the trolley in, slammed the door behind him and ran to the driver’s side.

He kept the vehicle completely serviced, with a full tank of gas, at all times. It roared to life at the turn of the key in the ignition and Grace backed out of the slot immediately, wrenching the wheel and shooting for the exit.

After several tries, Drake managed to buckle his seat belt. Everything was dimming. He needed to do the next things fast.

As Grace shot up out of the underground garage onto the street, skidding wildly, barely missing an oncoming bus, Drake brought his cell phone up, squinting to make out the numbers. Shaking, he punched in a number he knew by heart. All the numbers he needed to know—cell-phone numbers, bank-account numbers—he had memorized. They were not written down anywhere—they only existed in his head.

The call was picked up immediately. “Boss,” said a deep voice.

The relief nearly wiped Drake out. Grigori, his best pilot.

It was snowing heavily and cell-phone reception wasn’t very good. Drake had about a minute or two of consciousness left, but what he had to say was very simple.

“Grigori—”

A heavy chunk of metal fell on the hood, bounced heavily, then rolled off, leaving the hood badly dented. Grace screamed and lost control of the vehicle for a moment. Another piece of red-hot metal fell from the sky, then another. A long steel rectangle clattered down. The blade of a helicopter rotor.

Someone had blown up the helicopter on the roof. Drake had instinctively made for the ground, and his instincts had once again proven sound.

Grace was weaving erratically down the street, wide-eyed and white faced. “What’s happening?” she cried.

Drake stretched out a hand to touch her arm, failed, tried again. She turned slightly at his touch, then turned her attention back to the white, icy street ahead of her. She was sitting forward in her seat, terrified, clutching the wheel with white-knuckled fingers. She wasn’t a very good driver, but she would have to do the driving. Drake was in no condition to take the wheel.

“It’s okay,” he said to Grace and squeezed her arm. She didn’t answer, just pressed her lips together and nodded, eyes on the dangerous street ahead.

Drake brought the cell phone back to his ear. It felt like it weighed ten tons. “Grigori, listen. Keep…the Gulfstream 4…ready to go. I’m coming down with a passenger. Don’t—don’t know when I will make it. Stay by the plane.”

“Yes, boss,” came Grigori’s deep voice and Drake was reassured. If it took him a year to make it down to the Tampa airfield, Grigori would be there, the plane serviced and ready for takeoff in a few minutes’ time.

Streaks of black crossed his field of vision.

His hand was still on Grace’s arm. “Grace. My love.”

She didn’t take her eyes off the road, trying to hold the wheel steady, but she nodded. She was listening.

“We need to make it as fast as we can to Tampa, Florida. Don’t stop unless you have to. I have a plane waiting for us there.”

“No! Are you
crazy
? You’re wounded, Drake. You’re losing blood. I’m sure the stitches in your shoulder have been torn and your back is ripped open. And you’re concussed, probably badly. I’m taking you to Ben, right now. Which hospital does he work in?”

He was fading, his voice so weak it could barely be heard over the noise of the engine. He had to make Grace understand how important it was to get out of New York as fast as she could. To linger was to invite death.

“Promise me.” His hoarse voice cracked as his fingers tightened on her arm. She chanced a glance at him, wide-eyed at the tone of his voice, then looked back at the street. “Promise me you won’t stop as long as you can stay awake. We must”—he coughed, something in his chest exploding with pain—“we must get out of New York and make it down to Tampa. Promise me you won’t stop unless you must.”

The darkness was almost complete. He could barely see, barely think.

His fingers tightened even more, the last dregs of his fading strength. “Promise me.”

“I promise,” she sobbed, risking another quick glance at him. He saw from her face that he looked bad.

“Won’t…die,” he promised, hoping he could keep it.

He fought the weakness, with everything in him, but it won.

The world turned black.

Pizdets! Shit!

Rutskoi looked at the message he’d just paid another fucking hundred thousand dollars for.

Drake and woman gone. Blood on floor, walls. Living room full of bullet holes, room completely burned.

It had been almost impossible to see anything in the thermal imager because of the fire that witch started. Against all the odds, Drake and his bitch were still alive.

Cocksucker had made it out, but at least Rutskoi had wounded him. Or the woman.
Or both,
he thought viciously. Let it be both. Let them be bleeding their fucking hearts out on the street.

When he understood that Drake and the woman had probably made it out of the room, Rutskoi had sprinted to the rooftop and had taken out the helicopter on the opposite roof with ten incendiary rounds, watching with satisfaction as the helicopter exploded and fell in burning pieces through the snow to the street thirty stories below. Just to vent his frustration, Rutskoi had shot the pilot who had come out of a small, warm shed on the rooftop. It had given him immense pleasure to take Drake’s pilot down.

Shit.

No, control. He needed control. He waited a moment, forcing himself to move into the sniper’s mind-set of dispassionate detachment, then descended the stairs.

Rutskoi went back into the empty apartment and calmly broke down his Barrett, placing the pieces in their foam cutouts with steady hands that didn’t in any way betray the turmoil inside.

Drake had escaped. Okay. But the game wasn’t over yet. He was wounded and he hadn’t been able to escape with many resources.

And he was running with a woman he cared for. She would slow him down, force him to make mistakes. Drake was an operator, a clever, ruthless man. He would do what was necessary to survive. But with a woman to drag along behind him and protect, Drake would slip up. And Rutskoi would get him.

Rutskoi knew exactly how to track him down.

Terabyte.

Twenty genius hackers working out of Estonia, who provided around-the-clock services to anyone, for the right price. They could find out anything on anyone. Need dirt on your new boss? In 24 hours, Terabyte will deliver a dossier including video footage of the boss fucking a call girl. Need to know someone’s bank password? Easy. Terabyte can get classified information in a day, top-secret information in a day and a half.

Word had it that one of them had been the NSA’s top cyber expert and could hack into the array of military satellites ringing the globe.

For the right price, they would monitor the entire world for any appearance of Grace Larsen or Viktor Drakovich, in any of his incarnations.

Rutskoi had known Drake long enough, had studied him long enough, to know many of his pseudonyms, which he’d feed to Terabyte, together with a database of the companies Drake owned that he knew of.

It was entirely possible that with Terabyte’s help, he could track Drake to earth very soon.

The woman would slow him down, make him vulnerable. She would be the death of him.

Bed. He was lying on a bed.

It was raining.

Drake opened his eyes briefly, then shut them against the pain in his head. But not before he’d seen a ceiling. Gray, low, cracked. The cracks ran diagonally across the tiny room like a big river with tributaries running off it.

He opened his eyes again, ignoring the sharp pain, taking stock.

Small room, maybe five meters by five meters. Walls painted a dusty tan a long time ago. A small television set high up on a wall bracket, chained to the bracket. A cheap plastic wardrobe missing a handle on one door. A desk, a chair. An open door giving on to a small, white-tiled bathroom.

The mattress under him was as soft as a sponge, guaranteed to provide a restless night’s sleep.

Where were they? In a cheap motel room, obviously, but
where
?

He turned his head to the bedside table and had to wait for the room to stop spinning before reaching out to the notepad next to the old-fashioned rotary-dial telephone. It took him a couple of tries to coordinate his hand’s movements. Finally, he had the pad in his hand and brought it to his face, trying fiercely to focus.

JORDAN’S MOTOR COURT, he read. WALLIS, SOUTH CARO-LINA.

He’d never heard of Wallis, but he knew where South Carolina was.

Where was Grace? That he was alone in the motel room could be seen at a glance.

He had no memory of how he got here and understood that he must have been out for at least eight hours, probably more. If Grace had stopped, it was because she was too exhausted to go on.

So…where was she?

Drake felt a sharp ache in his chest that had nothing to do with wounds and everything to do with missing her. He would survive his wounds. His body was already knitting itself up, he could feel it. The headache and muscle pains were nothing.

But he needed Grace like he needed water and air. Ferociously.

Where the hell was she?

He rolled over in bed, relishing the small surge of strength he could feel returning to his body, and that was when he saw it.

The trolley, lying by the left-hand bedside table.

Open.

She hadn’t even bothered to close it.

Drake’s heart gave a sharp blow in his chest. Pure, lancing pain, such as none he had ever felt before, exploded inside him.

She’d left him.

Of course.

He was a hunted man. His enemies had almost killed her twice, had killed a dear friend and driven her out of her home and out of her life. She must have thought his enemies would eventually get her, too.

And there was the trolley, full of enough money to support someone like Grace for two lifetimes.

He didn’t even blame her. Any other woman would have done the same. If there was anyone in the world who understood the imperatives of self-preservation, it was Drake. Grace would have to be crazy to stay with him, a hunted man, a criminal. Wounded, perhaps dying, for all she knew.

He understood, completely.

So why did it fucking hurt so much?

It was a pain unlike any he had ever felt before, more than torn tissues and broken bones, much more. Something essential in him felt broken, blown apart—something at the core of his being, something that medicine couldn’t help and that would never heal.

Grace had left him and he felt completely adrift, untethered to the world. Even in his darkest days as a homeless boy on the streets, he had never felt this…hollow. The life force that had sustained him forever had somehow vanished.

He was probably capable of sitting up, even of getting up and walking. He needed stitches and some antibiotics, but he could function. He’d managed to get out of bad situations before in worse shape than this.

He knew what he had to do. Lack of money right now meant nothing. He had his cell phone and could start the process of accessing his funds. It would take a little time and a little trouble, that was all.

Grigori was waiting for him. The plan was a good one. Foolproof, almost.

Grigori would be waiting close by the Gulfstream 4, in a small, private airfield not far from the Tampa airport, which had heavy traffic in cargo flights. Grigori had access to all the flight plans out of Tampa. He’d fly them out at night, within 800 meters of a cargo flight headed for Eastern Europe, keeping directly below the jet blast of the engines with the collision lights off, completely invisible to radar.

They would fly across the Atlantic tailing the cargo flight and no one would ever know. It was standard operating procedure for Drake’s flights.

They’d land in Montenegro, where the deputy premier was one of Drake’s best customers, be carried over by boat to Apulia, the boot heel of Italy, where a car would be waiting to drive them to Rome. Grace had wanted to go to Rome, and by God he wanted to take her there.

That had been his plan—a few days in Rome, showing her the sights, then they would take their jump to the final destination—Sivuatu, a thousand miles from Fiji and a million miles from nowhere.

Even without Grace, the plan was good. He actually needed to go to Rome, where the second-best forger in the world lived. He’d had to run without any documents, and Signor Caselli could get them for him. A Belgian passport, a Maltese passport and perhaps a Croatian one.

But then again—if Grace was gone, why leave the country at all, why seek a new life? He was shedding his old life and creating a new existence to protect
her.
If she was gone, he could go back to his old life.

So okay, his security had been breached. He’d just tighten it. Put stainless-steel plates behind the windows, shuffle his bodyguards, hire new ones, upgrade his videoconferencing facilities.

Find the fucker who’d betrayed him and make him pay.

Hole up. Hell, he could do most of his business over a webcam connection, no need to ever leave his premises again.

Drake lay on the filthy bed, counting the cracks in the ceiling, telling himself to get up, get going, yet he lay unmoving on the dirty bed. Why did the thought of going back to New York and living under enhanced security conditions make him feel already dead and buried?

He couldn’t get his muscles into gear. He had the strength, but not the heart. For the first time in his life, he had no desire to get going. His chest felt hollow, empty, as if his heart had been ripped out, leaving a gaping hole.

Whatever he decided—move forward to the new life or fall back on the old—he needed to decide fast.

But he couldn’t move. He lay on his back, watching the lights of the passing cars outside the window, flumes of water thrown up by their tires, listening to the sleety rain pounding at the thin window pane, and tried to find it in himself to care enough to get going.

Nothing worked. He lay, thinking of nothing, feeling nothing, wanting nothing, hardly breathing as the clock in his head marked half an hour, an hour.

A heavy vehicle braked recklessly outside the motel room in a shower of gravel. A door slammed. A few moments later, the motel room door opened and Grace rushed in, arms full of packages.

She was pale, exhausted, completely soaked. Dumping the packages on the chair, she rushed to his bedside, placing a hand on his forehead.

“You’re awake. Thank God. I
hated
leaving you unconscious, but you needed medicine and we needed warm clothes and some food.”

Drake angled his body up on his elbows.

Grace. By some miracle, Grace was here. Tired and bedraggled and worried looking and more beautiful than ever. Oh God, she was
here.

“Came…back,” he managed to choke out through a tight throat.

She threw him a wry glance, hands busy pulling things out of paper bags. Gauze, disinfectant, bandages, cheap warm clothing. From one paper bag came the enticing smell of hamburgers. “Yes, I made it, without killing anyone, too. I know I’m a lousy driver, you don’t have to rub it in. I’ve never owned a car and—” She stopped, sucking in a shocked breath, turning her head to study him, a frown between her eyebrows. “Oh my God. You don’t mean that. Oh, Drake.” She sat abruptly on the bed, as if her legs wouldn’t support her anymore, hand cupping his jaw. “Oh, my darling, you thought I wasn’t coming back at
all.
” She studied his eyes and he dropped his. “You thought I’d abandoned you.”

He couldn’t speak. He could barely breathe. Tight bands constricted his chest, clutched his heart, squeezing.

Now that his head was higher, he could see that the trolley was still completely full of money. She’d only taken enough to make the purchases.

Oh God. Surely she would leave now. He’d just dealt her a monstrous insult, how could she stay? He couldn’t even open his mouth to beg her forgiveness, because every muscle he had was locked down in pain and sorrow. He could barely breathe through the constriction in his chest.

The room was utterly silent except for the pinging of sleet against the panes and the far-off hiss of tires on the wet road.

“My darling,” Grace whispered, her other hand cupping the back of his head. She bent forward until her forehead touched his. “Know this. I will never leave you. I couldn’t. I love you.”

Drake turned his head, nestling against her, nose in that glorious hair. She smelled of woman and smoke. He wanted to clutch her to him, but his hands wouldn’t move. They were shaking.

He was shaking.

A huge ball of something, some violent emotion, was working its way up his chest and throat, like sharp knives slicing him open from the inside out. He opened his mouth to let it out. It sounded like a sob, but that couldn’t be.

Except his cheeks were cold. Something was making them wet.

His battered brain took several minutes to realize that, for the first time in his adult life, he was crying.