Ultimate Weapon (15 page)

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a large dark splotch high on Janos’s coat sleeve. She leaned over the seat to take a closer look.

“Hey. You were shot,” she said in an accusing voice.

He grunted. “It is nothing.”

Macho cave man talk. Nothing, her ass. “Nothing meaning what?” she demanded. “Meaning there’s a bullet embedded in your arm, but it’s really nothing?”

“It is not embedded. It grazed me only. It is nothing,” he reiterated, his voice hard. “Please do not try to tell me that you care.”

Was he for real? “I most certainly won’t and don’t,” she informed him. “Go ahead, Janos. Bleed. Do you need me to drive?”

“No,” he growled.

“Do not, I repeat,
not
faint behind the wheel with my kid in the car,” she warned. “Or I will rip your head off your neck. Is that clear?”

He made a frustrated sound. “Be silent. We will talk later.”

He stopped responding to anything she said after that, maintaining a silence that drove her insane, but it wasn’t long until he pulled into the strip mall lot. He pulled in next to a BMW SUV, and began transferring her diaper bag, purse, and jewelry case from one vehicle to the other while she pried Rachel out of the car seat.

As if it was a done deal. Arrogant dick.

He jerked open her door and held out his arms for Rachel. Tam shrank back, clutching the limp child to her chest. “Actually, this is the part where Rachel and I thank you for your help, and wish you a very nice life,” she said. “Good-bye, Janos. Please don’t keep in touch.”

The steel in his dark eyes was utterly at odds with his goofy disguise. “You need help,” he said.

“And you think you’re helping me?” she flared. “By messing with my babysitter? Turning the cops on me, slandering me to Rachel’s adoption agency? Trashing my passports?”

“I did my best for you and your daughter back in that shuttle,” he said. “Draw your conclusions, but draw them fast. If you want to fight me, you will lose. You are strong, but I am stronger. You have your poison trinkets, I have knives and guns. You have a child who needs rest, perhaps medical care. Think, Steele. If I wanted you dead, you would be dead. Don’t be a fool. Get in the fucking car, and stop giving me trouble.”

She assessed her options in a split second. She could call the McClouds for backup, but if these men had gotten so close to her, chances were they already knew about her connection with the McClouds, which meant that Rachel wouldn’t be safe with any of them.

Nor would any family be who was looking after her.

But she could not deal with this alone and unarmed. With a toddler in her arms, she was toast. If she’d needed any further demonstration of that, she’d gotten it this morning.

She was just so tired, so rattled. She needed so badly for Janos’s offer of help to be real, she could not trust her own instincts. After all, Georg Luksch had paid him to drag her in, for God’s sake. And the man had a hidden agenda the size of Hong Kong. She could feel it like a subterranean earthquake, rumbling in the depths. And whatever the hell his agenda might be, it could not possibly be good news for her.

But God, she was tired. Inside and out. Tired of being alone, relying only on her own strength, her own energy. And already well into an adrenaline crash, as if some part of her had decided that the danger was past and she was safe to have her meltdown here and now. Hah.

She looked around. It was the crack of dawn, it was really cold, they were in a desolate, deserted strip mall where nothing would be open for hours. Rachel was shivering in her arms.

Janos waited, challenging her with his eyes to look inside him and find a lie. She blinked at the stinging fog of tears and looked, hard.

She did not see one. Fuck it. He’d saved their lives, even if he’d messed with them first. She let out a jerky breath and handed Rachel to him. “All right,” she whispered.

V
al slouched in a chair by the bed, grateful for the warmth and silence of the hotel room. Steele cuddled her child under the blankets.

He was immensely relieved that he had not been compelled to use force. He did not want to hurt her, and she was so quick and strong, it would have been inevitable if she had resisted. With the child already so traumatized, it would have been unpleasant, to say the least.

Steele was not doing well. Her lips were bluish, her eyes shadowed, her face an ashy gray. She hugged the child tightly to her body, stroking and murmuring. Rachel’s closed eyes looked sunken in her pinched white face.

He, on the other hand, was keeping his long coat on, oozing blood splotch and all, to camouflage his erection. An inconvenient physiological reaction to combat stress. He was sure that Steele would not be surprised by it, but also not amused in her present mood. He had no desire to hear what she would say. Imagining it was enough.

“How is she?” he asked.

“Better. She’s calmed down and breathing more deeply now. And she’s almost asleep, so shut up,” was Steele’s caustic reply.

Val sighed and flung his head back. His face itched from the glue, his scalp from the wig. The cotton batting stuffed inside his nose, lips, and cheeks irritated him beyond belief. He wished he could shower to get the cloying stench of marijuana and patchouli out of his nose, but getting naked under a deafening stream of hot water was unwise. If she slipped away now, he no longer had the RF tag on her jewelry case to follow. The first thing she’d done when she’d gotten to the hotel room was to pry the thing out of the case and flush it down the toilet.

He got up and headed to the bathroom, leaving its door wide open so he could see the path to the room door. How had the other team found her? He peeled off fake facial hair and soaped his face as he pondered it. As yet, Novak had no reason to think that he would not comply with the terms of their bargain. It had to be Hegel, PSS.

He pried and spat the cotton out of his mouth into the toilet, flushing it, not about to leave that much DNA where anyone could find it. He rinsed and spat again, thinking. No one but him had the codes and RF frequencies he had tagged Steele’s stroller and vehicle with. Hegel knew where she lived, but how could he have known about her trip to the airport in time to get a local team in place? The Taurus she drove had never been tagged. And she would have noticed if anyone was following her on a lonely highway at night.

The only explanation was that Hegel had marked him, not her. That the B team had located her by following him. But how? He’d taken care of the usual things before he left Budapest. New laptop, new phone, new organizer. He had changed every piece of luggage, footwear, clothing.

He’d used every trick he knew to shake followers, checking repeatedly to make sure he was clean. To the point of outright paranoia.

Val stared into the mirror, trying to form a matrix, but he was too exhausted. He looked haggard, his face carved out and shadowed with stubble. He hadn’t slept since before he went to Budapest. It showed.

It was hot in the room. Steele had turned up the heat to the maximum to get the baby warm. He popped a sweat under the coat.

Fuck the erection. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen one before.

He had to deal with the wound. The bullet had ripped through the fabric of his coat and torn a bloody furrow across the meat of his upper arm. It stung, but he’d taken far worse.

He shrugged off the coat and the bloody shirt, and hissed through clenched teeth as he washed the shoulder with soap and hot water. The sink was spotted with pink, but the wound barely oozed at this point.

He went out and retrieved the medical kit from his bag. Steele and the child were both asleep, at least apparently. They needed it.

He dressed his arm, and sank into the chair again, not bothering to put another shirt on with that heat blasting. He held his gun in his hand, resting on his leg, and watched them sleep.

Steele moved restlessly. Once, she muttered something in a language he could not place. From the tone, it sounded like a plea. He had no intention of dozing off, but the blackout blinds were down and the excessive heat could make him sleepy. His arm throbbed dully.

Tiny hands on his knees jolted him awake. The little girl, huge-eyed, was reaching out to grab the barrel of his Glock.

Cazzo!
He jerked the thing up out of her reach. Just what he needed, another brutal shock to his nervous system. “God, no,” he whispered. “Don’t touch it,
piccola.
Dangerous.”

Rachel thought it was a game, of course, and leaped to grab it, gurgling with glee. The nap had evidently restored her. She looked fine.

The laughter woke Steele. She jolted upright and took in the situation in an instant, diving from the bed and grabbing the child around the waist. “Rachel, Jesus! Don’t you ever,
ever
touch one of those, baby. Not ever, hear me? God, Janos, what the hell were you thinking, leaving that thing lying around?”

“I did not leave it,” he said grimly. “It was in my hand.”

“Just keep it the hell out of her reach!” Steele hissed.

Startled and upset, Rachel began to cry. Tam hugged her tightly, looking resigned. “I guess this means she’s not in shock.”

A shrill and stressful half hour passed before the child was happy again, distracted by an array of tiny toys, random colorful objects and books that Steele produced from the black bag. Val put on a clean shirt and strapped on his shoulder holster in the meantime. He would keep the gun fastened tight and high on his body from now on.

The little girl soon decided that he was more interesting than her toys. She toddled over, holding two small dolls. She held one out.

He took it. And now? Should he animate it? Make admiring comments? He’d never been around children, just Giulietta’s baby, when he was young, and that had ended so horribly. He still had queasy dreams about it now and again.

Rachel resolved his dilemma by holding up her other doll and pressing it, chest to chest, against the one he held. She adjusted its stiff, hard little plastic arms until it embraced his.

“Hug,” she explained solemnly.

A hot sensation swelled in his chest, tight and uncomfortable. He breathed the strange feeling down and adjusted the arms of his doll until it returned the other’s embrace. As best it could, of course, hampered by unyielding plastic and stiff mechanical ball joints. “Hug,” he echoed obediently.

Rachel rewarded him with a smile that startled him with its beauty. She pressed the dolls face-to-face. “Kiss?” she inquired.

He laughed at her earnest request. “Let’s not rush things,” he said. “I am shy. And we barely know each other.”

Rachel frowned and knocked the dolls’ plastic faces together. “Kiss,” she insisted.

“Rachel, don’t bother Mr. Janos,” Steele said, in a warning tone.

“She is not a bother,” Val said, realizing with surprise that it was true. He held up the doll to face hers. “Kiss,” he said, resigned.

Rachel rewarded him with another radiant smile. Her doll kissed his with enough intensity for him to start feeling a little strange about it. And Steele was giving him a distinctly unfriendly look.

“What?” he demanded. “I did nothing except get my doll kissed. Passively. My doll did not even kiss back.”

Steele shook her head, looking uneasy. “It’s strange. How she goes for you. Usually she screams bloody murder around strange men.”

“Maybe her instincts are better than yours,” he offered.

Tam made a derisive sound. “No, she just has a lot to learn. Learning to watch out for men with handsome faces and big guns comes after basic language skills, how to use a fork, and potty training. Come on, baby, come play with your dolls with Mommy.”

Rachel ignored her and held up another small doll to be admired. “Sveti give dollies,” she informed Val with great gravity.

“Oh,
sì
?” he responded politely. “Who is Sveti?”

“We see Sveti wedding!” She jumped. “Red dress! For me! Pretty!”

“Wedding?” He glanced at Steele. “You’re going to a wedding?”

“Today wedding! Today wedding! See Sveti! Mommy promise,” Rachel said, glancing fiercely at Steele for corroboration. “Promise!”

A frown marred Steele’s pale brow. “Honey, don’t babble,” she said tightly.

“Want red dress! Want Sveti! Promise!”

Steele massaged her forehead with her fingertips. “I don’t have your red dress now, baby,” she said wearily. “I left it at home. And Sveti’s not here. I’m sorry.”

Rachel’s face crumpled. Val braced himself for her ambulance siren imitation.
Today wedding
. He didn’t place much weight in a three-year-old’s sense of time, but Steele’s discomfort with Rachel’s revelation suggested that there had been plans to go to some event today, before he maneuvered her into running away.

“Is one of your McCloud friends getting married?” he asked.

“None of your damn business, and how did you know about the McClouds anyhow?”

“Want Sveti!” Rachel wailed. “Want wedding!”

“Is there someone at this wedding who you could trust to keep Rachel safe for you for a while?”

“That’s none of your damn business either.” She got up. “And it’s time for us to go. Thanks again for the—”

“Sit down.” He put all his force behind the words. “I am trying to save your child’s life.”

His tone made even Rachel’s wails trail off in uncertain whimpers. Steele sat slowly on the edge of the bed again, her full mouth pinched.

“The wedding is today?” he asked. “In Seattle?”

A sullen shrug was her response.

“You were planning to go?” he persisted.

“Before I tried to flee the country, yes,” she said bitterly. “Last night’s events put a crimp in my social calendar. This morning’s adventure didn’t help much either.”

“We should go,” he informed her. “It’s the perfect timing.”

Her eyes widened. “What’s this ‘we’ crap? We’re not going anywhere with you, Janos. I’m not exposing my friends to you and your weirdo homicidal pals. And besides, we have nothing to wear.”

“So order something online,” he said. “Have it delivered.”

She shook her head. “Listen to me, Val Janos, or whoever the hell you are. You haven’t even told me yet what the hell is going on. Until you explain to my satisfaction—”

“I can’t.” He shot a significant look at Rachel.

Rachel’s doll was hugging his doll once again. She tilted her head, and peeked up with a flirtatious smile.

“Honey baby, it’s time for you to have a bath,” Steele said briskly. “I’ll go run it for you.” She squinted at him. “And you will talk. Quietly, outside the bathroom door, while she bathes.”

A few minutes of preparation got Rachel paddling happily in a shallow bath with an assortment of floating rubber toys, produced from the miraculous black bag. Steele sat in the bathroom doorway where she could keep an eye on the child, and gestured for Val to sit opposite her on the floor.

“Talk,” she ordered. “Who were those guys?”

“I had no chance to interrogate them, so I cannot be sure,” he said. “But I assume they were a local team put in place by PSS.”

“PSS?” She looked perplexed. “Aren’t you PSS?”

“I was,” he said. “I had a disagreement with the organization. I suspect that after that, my boss no longer trusted me to carry out the mission, so he mobilized another team. They will consider me rogue after what happened this morning.”

“A disagreement? Over what?” she demanded.

“You,” he said baldly. “My boss insisted that I take Rachel and manipulate you with her.”

Her face was a pale, impenetrable mask. “And why didn’t you?”

He thought of several answers. Dangerous, inappropriate answers. But he was not yet ready to voice them. And she was definitely not yet ready to hear them.

“I don’t like hurting children,” he said finally. “It was often a problem for me in this work. When the issue came up again, I said enough,
vaffanculo a tutti
. I did not like the job in any case. Coercing a woman into going with a depraved pig like Luksch by threatening her child,
che schifo
. It is squalid.” He shrugged. “My boss said that a man in my position cannot afford such scruples. He was right. So I decided to change my position.”

“I see.” She examined her fingernails. “So, ah, let me get this straight. You followed me and helped me and Rachel in the shuttle just because you’re noble and heroic?”

“Ah…” He floundered, taken aback.

“I take it this is the part in the story where I’m supposed to be deeply impressed by how honorable you are? And melt like chocolate?”

He took the three steps back in his mind and waited until his anger at her sarcasm faded. “It is not a story,” he replied. “It is the truth.”

“Hmm.” She gazed at her daughter, splashing and humming in the tub. “So they took over all the data on me that you gathered for them and had this B team act on it?”

“No,” he said. “This is the part that troubles me. They knew the location of your home because I could not hide it from the satellite. But I do not know how they found you at the airport this morning. I did not share the frequencies that I tagged you with.”

She looked thoughtful. “They found me, but you don’t know how. Hmmph. I smell a ramped-up version of Good Cop, Bad Cop.”

His teeth began to grind. “The good cop does not usually kill the bad cops when that game is played,” he said.

“It depends on the stakes,” she said. “How hard the game is being played, how ruthless the players, how big the payoff. The psychological effects would be intense with murder thrown in.”

He stared at her. “I did not do that,” he said.

Her eyes slid away. “Hmm,” she murmured. “How noble. And very moving, Janos, but it doesn’t explain what you’re doing here with us. You should be lying on a beach on another continent, sipping an umbrella drink, putting all the unpleasantness behind you. If what you say is true, nobody is paying you a salary to cramp our style any longer. So why are we here?”

The woman was mercilessly focused. He had hoped to ease around the danger zone for a while, to warm her up, gain her trust. But no. She shoved him straight toward the perilous moment of truth.