Chapter 22
22
Katie screamed as the men jumped out at them and her brother and Alex both dropped to the ground.
A tall, familiar figure stepped out of the shadows—Natasha Gudenov—casually pointing a pistol at her. “You’re not going to make me kill you, are you, Katie McCloud?”
“What’s happening?” Katie demanded frantically. “I don’t understand.”
“My associates desperately want to get their hands on you and that baby. Enough to order a…direct approach…to you.”
“That’s what you call this? Shooting up a casino and hurting or killing who knows how many innocent civilians?” Katie was suddenly so ragingly angry she could hardly speak. Must be the adrenaline surging through her.
“The Italians need to understand that times change. This isn’t their town anymore,” Natasha growled. “Side benefit of tonight’s attack.”
One of the men with Natasha muttered in accented English. “Time to go. No more talk.”
“Thank you, Kiril,” Natasha said smoothly. To Katie she said more roughly, “Over there. Now.” The woman waved her pistol toward a big, dark SUV.
Katie knew from her father never, ever to get into a car with an armed hostile. Better to get shot where you stood and take your chances with getting medical help than to be hauled away to somewhere isolated where there was no chance of help or rescue.
“No,” she said firmly.
Natasha sighed. “Gentlemen.”
Two huge thugs lifted Katie by her upper arms and bodily hauled her and Dawn to the SUV. She kicked and fought and yelled for all she was worth, but to no avail.
The men shoved her into the vehicle and she barely avoided landing on top of the baby. She glared as the men piled in beside her. They ignored her fists as she pummeled them fruitlessly.
Were Alex and Ian okay? She didn’t dare ask about them lest Natasha casually order them shot. Katie strained to see their bodies on the ground, to see if they were moving or showing any signs of being alive.
Please God, let them not be dead .
Panic ripped through her as the SUV pulled out of the parking lot to the sound of sirens—a lot of them—screaming down the strip toward the front side of the casino.
Her mind worked at hyper-speed. She hadn’t been killed in the parking lot. Natasha’s bosses wanted her alive for now. She wasn’t in immediate danger of dying, but she desperately needed to figure out what the hell was going on.
“Why am I so important to your bosses?” she asked Natasha who sat in the front passenger’s seat.
“Not you. The baby.”
“Dawn?” Katie asked blankly. “What’s so important about her?” Holy crap. Who was her father, anyway? Dawn was still frantic and Katie hugged her close, shushing her and rocking her until she began to calm down.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” the Russian woman replied. “I just do what I’m told.”
“And that includes throwing a tiny, helpless, newborn under a bus?” Katie snapped.
“Exactly,” Natasha replied blandly. If anything, the bitch sounded faintly amused.
“Do you know who her father is, then?” Katie couldn’t resist asking.
She caught the faint frown that passed across the woman’s face as she glanced back at Katie. “I assumed it was Alexei.”
Katie shook her head. “He was the physician who delivered her. But he’s definitely not her father.”
“He’s listed on her birth certificate as the father.”
Jeez. How did this woman know that? “Yeah, and I’m listed as the mother of record. We had to put our names on her birth certificate to get her through Customs in Kyrgyzstan. But I’m no more this child’s birth mother than you are.”
“Indeed? Well, that explains a lot.”
Huh? “How?”
“Clueless American,” Natasha muttered.
She turned back to face the front and snapped something at the driver in Russian. He slowed down his breakneck pace and blended in with the traffic fleeing the shooting behind them. They turned off the broad avenue and took surface streets through a run-down residential area into an industrial area. Old warehouses and factories loomed, dark and dead, around them.
The SUV stopped in front of one and a guy from the back seat jumped out to throw up a huge garage door. The vehicle pulled into the cavernous space and the door closed behind them.
“This is where we will learn your true value to those who care about you,” Natasha commented.
“How’s that?” Katie asked, her gaze darting around at every detail she could ascertain in the gloom. It looked like a huge, empty warehouse. Concrete floor. Littered with trash. Rusty steel columns at wide intervals supported I-beams up by the ceiling. It looked like a few windows were spaced high up by the ceiling, as well. But at the moment, no light shone through the filthy panes. A house-sized box stood off to one side. Offices, no doubt.
It was to these the SUV headed.
“No funny business, Katie McCloud. I’m not under orders to keep you alive. I’m only under orders to take the baby. It is a kindness I do you to let you stay with her.” She snorted. “Not that I want to take care of some squalling brat, anyway.”
Take the baby? Why? Who wanted Dawn so badly?
No matter how loud she shouted the questions inside her head, no answers came to her. Where was Alex? And Ian? Were they alive? She devolved into fervent prayer.
She had to keep thinking. Stay aware and alert. Look for an opportunity to slip away from her captors. Leave a clue for her rescuers. She figured they’d driven for nearly a half hour. They’d never really left the urban sprawl of northern New Jersey. She sniffed the air. No salt smell, so they’d probably driven inland. She estimated roughly due west from Atlantic City.
They’d probably gone sixty miles per hour for the first five minutes or so, and then slowed maybe forty miles per hour. She did the math in her head. She was fifteen to twenty miles away from the Cartwheel Casino, then.
“Take her out there,” Natasha ordered, jerking her chin at the warehouse space behind them. “I have several calls to make. No one leaves here and no one makes any phone calls. Understood?”
The three men nodded and led Katie out of the office.
“What are your names?” she asked the guys. Get to know your captors. Become a human being to them and not just a commodity . Hostage training 101, dumbsquat!
How many times had she heard her father growl that over the years at cop shows doing bad hostage plots on television?
A sob threatened to break through at the thought of her father yelling at the TV. She forced it down brutally. She had no time for fear. She had to be strong for Dawn. For herself. For Alex.
For Alex? Was she that far gone to him? The Russian thugs shoved her down onto a sturdy metal chair with a vinyl cushioned seat. They taped her ankles to the chair legs and passed duct tape around her waist and the chair back until she was securely attached to the seat.
“I gather you’re not planning to keep me here for long since I can’t go to the bathroom like this?” she tried.
The Russians didn’t deign to answer her.
One of the thugs commented reasonably kindly, “Don’t try nothin’. We’ll be watching you, and Natasha says to shoot you if you try to pull anything. Wouldn’t wanna to hurt the kid, so you behave, okay?”
Katie nodded her understanding.
All three men retreated into the shadows, leaving her alone on that chair with Dawn in the sling around her neck. Thankfully, they’d left her hands free to hold the infant. Somewhere in the mad flight from the shootout, she’d finally lost the baby bag. At least Dawn had a reasonably fresh diaper on. Now, if only whatever was going to happen didn’t take too long, Dawn should sleep for several hours before she got hungry.
If Dawn’s birth father wanted her, why hadn’t he just identified himself and asked to have her? He was legally entitled to custody of his daughter. Why all this drama and violence to snatch her?
Which led to the question, what if this wasn’t Dawn’s father coming after her? Who else could possibly be interested in one tiny baby?
Oh, Alex. Where are you? Please be all right .
Dawn slept deeply in her arms. Katie would have loved to do the same, but she was too terrified of what came next, too confused, to sleep. As the night wore on, boredom set in, and with it, mental clarity.
Was this what life with Alex would always be like? Would she always be the soft target, used to get at him? How could she put herself in a situation like this long term, let alone put Dawn in this kind of danger? Assuming she survived this fiasco, how could she possibly stay with him?
She had no right to be so selfish. No right to endanger an infant whose safety depended on her. The longer she sat there, the more her heart broke. And the more her heart broke, the more she realized just how much she cared for Alex.
As the first lightening of the blackness beyond the high windows began to bleed into the big warehouse, she finally admitted the truth that had been staring her in the face for a while, now. She loved Alex. Like it not, wise or not, somewhere in all the fear and fleeing and flirting, she’d fallen in love with him.
Admitting it to herself felt like a huge weight lifted off her chest. She must’ve been in denial longer than she realized. Yet another bout of paralyzing terror for his safety roared through her, and for the dozenth time, she fought it off. She had to stay tough.
There’d been no shots fired when they burst out of the casino, yet Ian and Alex had gone down immediately, which meant somebody had probably struck them both. Back of the head karate chop, or something. Hard enough to knock them out and drop them. Such a blow delivered by a pro would disable them for a few minutes but not kill them.
Good Lord willing, both men had raging headaches but were already tracking her and planning a rescue. All she had to do was be patient and not do anything stupid to get herself killed before Alex and Ian charged in here on their white horses.
She must have dozed off because the slamming of a door made her jerk upright sometime later. It was morning, although the rosy quality of the light made Katie think it was still very early. Natasha was storming toward her looking spitting mad. At least the woman wasn’t overtly wielding a weapon.
“Who in hell are you?” the Russian demanded while she was still a dozen feet from Katie.
She replied cautiously, “To borrow a line from Alex, I need a context for that question to be able to answer it for you.”
Unwilling humor flashed in Natasha’s eyes. “You really know him, don’t you?”
Katie nodded. “Yes. I do.”
“Who are you to him?”
“Why do you ask?”
The Russian flared up. “I am asking questions, here! Answer me!”
“He and I were co-workers overseas delivering babies and giving medical care to locals.”
“So that baby really is not his?”
“No, she really isn’t. Alex delivered her, but her mother died.” Memory of all that blood and his desperate fight to save the girl flashed through her mind’s eye in all its gory detail. She shuddered at the memory. She looked up and caught the Russian woman watching her closely.
“You are lovers, you and Alex, yes?”
Katie shrugged. “You would have to ask him. Love is not a word I associate readily with him. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Natasha shrugged. “A cold man, Alexei. Hard like his father.”
Katie’s eyebrows shot up. “You knew his father?”
“Of course. How else do you think I met his son? Roman introduced us.”
The father took the son to a hooker? Wow. No wonder Alex had weird ideas about sex. He hadn’t even been allowed to discover girls for himself or fall in love and explore sex sweetly with his first serious girlfriend. Hatred for Roman Koronov coursed through Katie. The bastard had screwed up his son in every way he possibly could.
“Why does Alexei protect this baby?”
Katie frowned not entirely understanding the question. “Because it’s the right thing to do? Because Dawn is an innocent, helpless infant?”
“Why does he try to adopt her?”
“Because he wants a family of his own?” Katie tried.
Natasha laughed at that, but more in derision than actual humor. “You forget. I know your Alexei. He will have family of his own when Hell freezes over.”
Something hopeful inside Katie deflated. Sadly, she suspected Natasha was right. She was an idiot to hold out hope for Alex and her and Dawn being together.
The woman came closer and leaned down close enough for Katie to smell a hint of vodka on her breath beneath the coffee. “Tell me why, little American bird, when I call my…associates…to let them know I have you and baby, within minutes my phone starts ringing.”
“Who was calling you?” Katie asked carefully. Pease let it be Alex .
“First I get a call from the FSB. The fucking FSB ,” she hissed.
Katie jolted. “What did they want?”
“They offer to pay me a great deal of money to give them baby. Enough for rest of my life.”
Katie’s jaw sagged. What on earth did they want with Dawn?
“And then my phone rings again. This time it is CIA. They offer me money for you and kid. I tell them what FSB offers; they offer to double it.”
What. The. Hell? Katie got that the Americans would be willing to pay for the safety of an American citizen, but double what sounded like a lot of money already? Did Uncle Charlie really have that much clout? Dang.
“I call FSB again,” Natasha said in agitation, a Russian accent thick in her voice, now. “And they offer to match CIA.”
Holy crap. There was a bidding war going on for her and Dawn’s lives?
“And then Alex calls.” Natasha snorted. “His offer I understand. I let you two go, he lets me live.”
That sounded like Alex. And it warmed Katie all the way to the cockles of her soul…whatever the hell cockles were.
“Am I allowed to vote on which offer you accept?” Katie asked dryly.
A crack of laughter escaped the Russian woman. “Now you know why I ask, who in hell are you?”
“I’m a nurse from Pittsburgh. I was offered a job by a humanitarian relief organization to go to remote corners of the world to render medical aid.”
Natasha stared at her skeptically. Katie supposed she would have trouble believing such an answer if she were in the other woman’s shoes.
“You are more than a nurse,” Natasha declared. “Much more.”
“I don’t work for the government. I promise you. Call my employer—Doctors Unlimited. They’ll verify who I am.”
“They can lie.”
“Have them send you a picture of my last pay stub. Or look at the staff pictures posted on their website. Right now. This very second, before anyone can tamper with the site and add me to it.” She rattled off the website URL and Natasha typed it into her cell phone. Katie held her breath in hopes that the woman would believe her.
“That picture of you sucks,” Natasha declared in a few seconds.
Katie smiled in relief. “I told them that, too, but a man runs the D.U. website. He didn’t care.”
Natasha’s cell phone rang, its jangle loud in the cavernous space. Dawn stirred as Natasha put the device to her ear. Her gaze shot to Katie and she snapped something back in terse Russian.
Drat. If only she spoke Russian.
Natasha jammed the phone in her pocket and shouted at the men ranged around the room. They lurched and started into motion, but it was too late. Every window in the place exploded inward in a massive eruption of glass and noise.