“I don’t bluff, honey. I don’t need to. It is about to become clear that he secreted a poison capsule on his person before he was taken in for questioning. A specialized poison, used for years in the espionage world. Impossible for the guards to have found. No one to blame but himself.”
Alice swallowed. Her throat felt like it had rocks lodged in it. But the longer she kept the woman engaged, the longer she and Florence stayed alive. Every schoolteacher knew the psychology of a bully—they never passed up an opportunity to make their quarry feel miserable. “Let us go. Let him go. We won’t say anything, just like Nika didn’t.”
“You’re trying to delay the inevitable, I understand. But that’s the thing about the inevitable. It’s … inevitable.”
“You don’t have as much influence as you think.”
Tania gave a small smile. “You know, maybe Iwillkeep you alive for a little longer, just until I receive confirmation of Mr. Beck’s sad passing. A photo of his dead, frothing body, perhaps.He dies with an image in his mind of you awaiting your fate, you die with an image in your head of him meeting his fate. It’s almost Shakespearean.” Tania walked to the door, her hands linked behind her, instructing the goon to gag Alice again. She paused, her hand on the door handle. “But look on the bright side—this way you won’t have to bury your sister. Not that she’ll bury you either, given that your body won’t be found. She’ll spend the few days she has left searching for you, and then she’ll die haunted by the question of what happened. Tragic. Really. Someone should write a book about it.”
Chapter 37
Carter
The next time the door to the interview room opened, Carter was lying on his side on the floor, his face slack, the half-eaten burger beside him. The water bottle was knocked over, its contents seeping into the carpet. The guard paused in the doorway before cautiously stepping inside and quietly drawing the door closed.
The guard stepped over Carter to pick up the burger—just as Carter expected. While the guy was off-balance, Carter sprang up, grabbed his legs and tackled him to the floor. Before he knew what had happened, Carter had him disarmed and pinned, with the revolver jammed against the back of his neck.
“How’re you doing, Tyler? Was wondering when you’d be back to clean up the evidence. Wouldn’t want anyone testing that food and water now, would you?”
“You’re not gonna fire that in here.”
“You’re right. I just wanted to make sure you couldn’t. I don’t need a weapon—I can kill you with my hands in several different ways. Goes with the training. Self-defense, since you just tried to kill me, and I can prove it. Better for both of us if you just lend me your uniform and your handcuffs, and I leave you to your guilty conscience.”
“My uniform?”
“And your security pass. What a pity the video link is down. Gonna be a while before anyone comes to check on you, sitting here in your underwear, handcuffed to the table.”
And while Tyler Wade sat tight, Carter was going to find Alice and his mom. Because no way was he losing anyone, ever again.
Chapter 38
Alice
Alice tried to shift into a less uncomfortable position. Pain seared her side, but if she sat tall and took short breaths, she could avoid the worst of it. The shed was silent and growing hotter as the afternoon slid on into evening, with one remaining guard leaning back against a wall. Alice caught snatches of Tania’s muffled voice outside. Going by her tone, she was clearly getting impatient. For what?
Beside Alice, Florence also sat ramrod straight, but more for reasons of pride, Alice suspected. The only giveaway of her real feelings was a jiggling leg that made her foot compulsively tap the floor. She seemed to be avoiding looking at Alice, which was understandable, given that Alice had dragged Carter into the trap that had set all this in motion. And had pinned the murder on him to begin with.
The door opened, and several goons entered. One ordered Alice and Florence to get up, which Alice did gingerly, since she couldn’t push off with her hands. She followed Florence through the door into the yard, limping slightly to keep the weight off her injured side. Chickens clucked and scattered before them. Was this it? A bullet to the head? Their bodies dumped where they would never be found?
She couldn’t let that happen to Kimberly. Or Carter, if he was even still alive. At last, she felt something for someone, and it ended like this? At last, she had a glimpse of what that kind of connection could be like. It was only the beginning of things. It couldn’t end here.
Tania was leaning against the hood of the blue sedan. “Get rid of them,” she said. “And get this place and the cars cleaned up. No DNA. No mistakes.”
Alice detected a slight frown from Florence, which was more emotion than she’d seen from the woman all afternoon. Tania, for her part, seemed to have lost her earlier swagger.
Tania’s phone rang, and she almost dropped it in her haste to answer. Seconds later, she hung up. “Get them out of here and finish them off,” she shouted to her goons. “A convoy of police and Feds has just come off the highway.”
A goon put his hand on Florence’s shoulder. It was like he pressed a button. She whirled around, threw her hands over his head so he was trapped in her zip-ties and yanked him down by the neck, at the same time driving her knee up into his nose. Alice hoped the sickening crunch was his nose and not her knee. He reeled back, the sudden force snapping the tie, and Florence lunged for his holster.
Sirens. There were sirens. Florence was buying time? If so, it was working—everyone was frozen to the spot with the shock of watching a sixty-something woman take on a man half her age and twice her size. But the sirens seemed to break the freeze-frame. The other guards went for Florence, just as she grabbed the gun from the holster and backed up, half-limping, half-hopping, training it from goon to goon, as they drew their own weapons.
“Sure, we can kill time having a shootout,” Florence shouted, tearing off her gag, “or you can take your chance, get in the car and get out of here. I know what I’d choose.”
With all eyes on Florence, Tania took off in the other direction, her pumps slipping on the gravel. She was headed for another car, a Lexus parked alongside the sedan. Before Alice knew what she was doing, she was running after the woman, as if her feet had made the decision and not her head. And then she was catching up and she had to figure out what the hell to do about that.When in Rome…Following Florence’s example, she leaped up and clotheslined Tania around the neck with the zip-ties. Tania toppled backward, pushing Alice off-balance. The world tipped. Alice’s spine hit gravel, the impact firing up her side, and Tania bounced down on top of her. A direct hit on her ribs. She saw stars. She actually saw stars—flashes of darkness, with pinpricks of light. She tried to suck in a breath but it was like her lungs had gone concave and were stuck that way. Next she knew, Tania was kneeling on her, a knee pinning her bound hands. Alice squirmed but Tania’s fingers closed around her neck. What had Alice been thinking, going after her like that? Age difference or not, the woman had probably been actual KGB. Alice tried to cry out to Florence, who was somewhere behind the cars—no doubt facing problems of her own—but no sound came out. She lashed out with her legs, wriggled for all she was worth, each shift knifing her side, but Tania just squeezed tighter, her blue eyes bulging with the effort. Alice’s vision darkened and speckled. Her hearing seemed to glitch. Where was Florence? Had Tania’s people gotten her?
Beside them, the sedan’s wheels spun and the vehicle roared off. Gravel pelted them, and Tania flinched. Alice used the distraction to yank her hands free and whack Tania’s arms away, while trying to gulp in a breath through the gag. The sirens were louder. Alice tried rolling to her side but her body refused to cooperate, and she flopped onto her back again, each gasping inhalation bringing a new wave of pain.
“There? That where it hurts?” Tania said, throwing her whole weight into elbowing Alice’s side.
