Chapter Ten
A nna watched Evan walk into range of the hotel’s security camera monitoring the public elevator waiting area on the parking level as if he’d just parked his car.
Though his urban camo, gear, and weapons looked out of place.
She tracked him through the lobby and into the restaurant, where he sat down with his supervising handler.
A few people noted him passing through, some with just idle curiosity, while others were surprised. Like the FBI agents who were also in the restaurant.
Evan had a conversation with his boss, ordered and received coffee and breakfast, and shortly the FBI agents were invited to join them.
He continued to eat steadily, but not rushing.
His boss seemed almost too relaxed, and he was working hard on staying that way. Yet he tracked every movement inside the restaurant and whatever was in his field of vision of the lobby.
Someone or something was coming, and he knew it.
Anna searched the other security camera feeds, but couldn’t find anything obvious.
She glanced back at the restaurant camera in time to see the FBI agents leaving.
Evan’s boss finally dropped the relaxed pose and leaned forward with a grim smile. He spoke, but he did a good job of obscuring his mouth, so she had no idea what he said.
A minute or so of verbal exchange between the two men, then Evan got to his feet and left.
As he strode into the lobby, Anna focused on Evan’s boss’s face. Relief . The man had been so tense before, the difference in his appearance was almost night and day. His face wasn’t as square, his eyes were larger, and his mouth not nearly so flat.
She found Evan again in the elevator, going down. When she checked the lobby and the street directly out front of the hotel, several black SUVs pulled into the entrance. Three, four, no, five vehicles. Pairs of people got out of each SUV wearing matching black jackets and carrying handguns in their hands.
One of them turned around to yell at the others and she got a look at the back of the jacket. Homeland Security .
One corner of her upper lip curled up in a snarl. Bastards .
Where was Evan?
She found him getting off the elevator on the parking level and leaving the range of the camera. He was going in the direction of the lot or the entrance to the hidden tunnel system.
He wasn’t on any of the parking garage cameras.
Some of the Homeland Security agents dashed into the elevator and went down to the parking level. They, too, disappeared off the screen.
She waited, sitting on her hands because she was terrified she’d do something stupid if she left them loose.
After a couple of minutes, the agents returned to the elevator and went back up to the lobby. They joined a knot of agents who were in the lobby talking to Mason and Magnus. They shook their heads.
He got away.
Evan got away .
But he wasn’t going to stay safe, he was going to Homeland’s office, which was crawling with agents. Where his face would be all over all their computer screens, and they were looking for him.
One of the cell phones on the desk rang.
She picked it up. Baz.
“How is Nika?” she asked, instead of saying hello.
“She hasn’t regained consciousness yet,” he said. “There are four Homeland Security agents here who want her to come in and explain a few things . I walked in on her surgeon telling them she was lucky to be alive and it would be weeks before she could go back to work. As soon as they saw me, one of them actually called me a vampire.”
“What is wrong with those people?” Anna asked.
“I think they’ve taken a drive into conspiracy theory town and perhaps bought a vacation home there.”
“Have you been arrested?”
“No, as soon as I heard the v word, I took off my shirt, showed them the damage done by Ledger’s bullet in my body armor, then took off my vest so they could see the bruising underneath.”
There wouldn’t be any...unless... “Did you injure yourself right before showing them?”
“Yup. Nika’s doctor, who was in the room when I showed the agents my boo boo even told me to take it easy for a few days.”
“Evan has gone to Homeland’s office here in New York City.”
There was silence for a moment.
“Why the hell would he do that?” Baz asked.
“Since they took Brian from the hospital and Williams saw them do it, Evan decided to rescue him.”
“I think they’d like to pin this whole mess on Evan. Going after Brian was dumb.”
They were silent for several moments.
“It could be a distraction,” she said slowly. “Maybe their real aim is to flush me out.”
“Show your face and they’ll be right there to handcuff you.”
“We are all so damned afraid of cameras and video,” Anna said slowly. “Maybe it’s time we learned to use them.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I call a press conference and go public with my ordeal and how they’ve taken an FBI agent whose only crime was trying to help me. That should get Homeland’s attention. Then, while I’m revealing what Ledger did and was willing to do, Evan might have an easier time of getting Brian out their hands.”
“It certainly wouldn’t hurt if you mention how he, an FBI agent, has also been kidnapped.”
“Indeed.”
“How are you going to get out of the hotel and to the embassy without being arrested?” Baz asked.
“I’m not going to leave the hotel. I thought I’d call the Slovenian embassy and see if the ambassador can come get me with representatives from the State Department.”
“And if there are some reporters on hand...oops?”
“Oops,” she agreed, her stomach flipping with a queasiness she hadn’t had to deal with for a lot of years.
The situation was...horrible. There were too many people involved for her to protect them all. Especially since she was being hunted as well.
“What if this is finally it?” she asked, suddenly so tired she wanted to weep. “We’ve always known what would happen if the truth about us ever got out to a wide enough group of people that we couldn’t control.”
Her son didn’t say anything for several seconds.
Finally, he said, “I have too much to live for to think like that. I want my happily ever after.”
She didn’t respond. Happiness wasn’t something she’d experienced for a very long time. She’d been content on occasion, but happy? She had too much to do, keeping their family under control, and keeping vampires everywhere from doing stupid things.
“Do you have something to live for, mom?”
Did she ?
The question stabbed her in the heart. The pain radiated outward in an icy wave, bringing everything inside her to a stop. She wanted to breathe, but her lungs wouldn’t work.
“I’m not judging you,” her son said, in a calm voice. “Hell, I’ve made mistakes so huge, there’s no way I can pay them back.”
“I...gave up happiness a long time ago,” she finally choked out.
Baz sighed. “You’ve waited long enough. You need to go after what makes you happy.”
“I can’t,” she wailed, tears dripped down her face. “He’s not like us.”
“And that stopped me?”
His question brought her to a complete stop. “What? Oh.” Her mind went to the inevitable conclusion. “But she’ll die.”
“Yes, and so will we, eventually.”
He said it like it was something to look forward to. “Is that a good thing?”
He laughed. “None of us were built to live forever. Most of us are insane. All of us are paranoid, controlling assholes, and none of us are happy.”
“But—”
“Yes, it’s a good thing. I’m tired of all the bullshit. I’m tired of putting up with all the assholes. I want to show Nika the world. I want to watch her face when she sees all the strange and wonderful places I’ve seen. I want to see everything through her eyes.”
“I don’t think Evan is going to want to just travel.”
“So, find out what he does want to do.”
“You don’t... mind?”
“I think it’s slightly weird, but given how weird our lives are, I can deal. At least I know him well enough to know he’d be good for you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that you take care of everyone but yourself. His only goal is to look after you.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because when I asked him what his intentions were with my Mom, that’s what he told me.”
“Bazyli,” she barked. “You didn’t.”
“I did, and before you squawk anymore, he wasn’t angry. He expected someone would give him the man to man talk.”
Anna closed her eyes. “Men are strange creatures.”
Her son snorted. “Go, do your thing.”
“Be careful, Bazyli. Look after Nika.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He hung up.
Anna punched in the cell number for Mason. She had arrangements to make with her embassy and the State Department.
***
A bout two hours later , Anna was dressed like a CEO, but with one addition. Magnus was something of an artist. His medium wasn’t paint and canvas, however. He’d become an expert makeup artist, specific to wounds and injuries. Her hairstyle now included a realistic looking and feeling stitched head wound. It was covered in the kind of bandage normally used in hospitals.
Anna had even cut her thumb and dribbled some of her blood on her bandage and transferred some to the fake wound. If anyone tried to test the bandage, they’d find her blood on it.
It itched, and she had to consciously work to keep her hand from scratching the area.
She sat on a couch in Yvgeny’s apartment waiting for Mason to come up on the elevator. As soon as the people from the State Department arrived, he would bring them up. They would then escort her to the Slovenian embassy.
Her phone beeped with a text.
She looked at it.
It was from Mason. Black Ops coming up the elevat— .
The message cut off.
She looked at the elevator. Someone had managed to get here before the State Department and her embassy. It couldn’t be Ledger. The man was still in FBI custody.
Well, she’d wanted to poke the anthill to see what came out, and she’d gotten her wish.
She turned the phone off, but didn’t leave it. Even if she disabled it, some tech person could get the information off it. She stuck in her bra.
“I am never going to tease Yvgeny about his penchant for safe rooms and hidden exits again,” she muttered to herself, as she opened the wall panel entrance next to the elevator for the secret staircase and slipped inside.
She closed the panel, set the now useless phone in the corner, and listened.
About ten seconds later, the elevator dinged and opened. The elevator carriage jiggled a bit, indicating that something heavy moved out of it. Or several someones.
She closed her eyes and concentrated on listening.
The slight squeak of a shoe on Yvgeny’s tiled floor. A couple of heavy breathers. The sighs of fabric as whoever got off the elevator moved around.
She waited another ten seconds. Fifteen.
“Clear,” a male voice said, sounding to her like he was closer to the kitchen area than the elevator.
The noise of several people moving became much clearer. They’d relaxed a bit.
“Sir, there’s no one in the apartment.”
She couldn’t hear the reply.
“We have a team on the stairs, so far no contact.”
It sounded like the speaker was moving closer to the elevator.
A tinny voice said, “Leave two men there, the rest of you, come down. We need to have people in place on schedule.”
Close enough for her to hear the person on the phone directing the men in the apartment.
“Yes, sir.”
The underling sounded like he was standing right in front of the elevator.
“You two, stay here. Do not drop your guard. Anyone you encounter here could be one of them.”
Two voices replied with, “Yes, sir.”
The elevator dinged again, three or four people got on it, and the doors closed.
Anna quietly started down the stairs.
It took almost ten minutes to go down fifty floors, and she didn’t rush. By the time she got down to the lobby level, she could hear several people shouting through the walls.
Mason was one of them, demanding to see arrest warrants, probable cause, and allow the State Department officials inside.
Someone else was shouting about police brutality.
Someone else was demanding to see Yvgeny, or Anna, or Bazyli.
Someone, a woman, was crying.
A man’s voice rose above the others. “Handcuff anyone with the last name Breznik. We’re bringing them in for questioning. Suspected terrorism.”
“We only have a warrant for Anna Breznik,” a different man said.
“Material witnesses,” the first man said. “Bring them all.”
So Mason and Magnus were in danger as well.
She considered her options. She could interrupt what was happening in a couple of ways. First, she could step out into the open and surrender herself.
Or, she could exit the same way Evan had, down on the parking level, come up to the lobby level, wave, and lead whoever was looking for her on a merry chase through the subway system.
Surrender was out. All she’d get out that was horribly painful torture.
Leading whoever was looking for her on a chase wouldn’t work, either. That would tell her pursuers where to look for her. She needed the tunnels, public and secret, to be free of people, not crowded with law enforcement people.
Plus, if she tried to rescue Mason and Magnus now, she’d be leaving Brian in the hands of Homeland Security. If it was Homeland arresting Mason and Magnus, it would be better to wait until all her people were in the same place.
If it were Homeland.
Damn it, if she were upstairs in the safe room, she’d have access to the security feeds. Anna continued to listen.
“Who authorized our arrests?” Mason asked, his voice a sharp growl.
“Homeland Security Secretary Ledger,” came the reply.
So, Homeland again.
“Where is Anna Breznik?”
“I don’t know,” Mason answered. “She was supposed to meet with some people from the State Department, but you guys wouldn’t let them in. For all I know, she saw all of you and decided to meet them out on the street.”
A number of people swore and ran out of the lobby.
“Why was she meeting with the State Department?” the same man asked.
“She wanted to launch a formal complaint and initiate attempted murder charges against Counterterrorism Coordinator Ledger.” This time, Mason sounded smug.
Anna almost laughed.
“I knew all you Brezniks were in on this,” the man said.
“The Breznik Family has extensive business interests in the United States and around the world. You’re going to have to be more specific about the this .”
“You’re part of a criminal organization with ties to terrorists.”
“No, we’re not,” Mason said matter-of-factly.
“Well, I guess we’ll find out,” the man said. “Get these two over to our headquarters for questioning,” he shouted.
A couple of minutes later, the lobby was almost completely silent.
The State Department wasn’t going to be able to help her, not now. They would have made a good defense. She needed a better offence.
What she needed was a bunch of people no one could anticipate, who Homeland couldn’t just throw in jail.
And she knew just where to find them. About forty-eight stories up.
Anna ran back up the stairs until she got to the level of the guest rooms the Chinese were staying in and knocked on the door.
When it opened, she said, “I need your help.”