Chapter 18
Chapter 18
Fearghas had charged down the hallway where the toilets were located. When he didn’t find Catya in the hallway, he barged into the women’s room, frightening the ladies there.
Catya wasn’t in there.
He went into the men’s room just in case. Not there either.
Back out in the hallway, he ran back to the door to the ballroom and stood there, scanning faces, searching for the blond wig and the shimmering gold dress. She wasn’t there.
“Anyone see Catya?” he said into his mic.
“No,” Hank responded.
“She hasn’t returned,” Dmytro answered.
“I replayed the videos,” Ace said. “Last sighting, she went through the door where you’re currently standing.
“Somehow, she got past the cameras,” Fearghas said. “She’s not in there.”
As he stood in the doorway to the ballroom, several men came from behind him and entered the ballroom.
Fearghas moved out of the doorway and further into the ballroom himself, searching again for Catya. “Are you sure she’s not on the second level?” he asked.
“Not there,” Ace responded.
More men came out of the hallway behind Fearghas. He’d only counted three men in the men’s room. Where?—
Cassandra Miles passed him, hurrying into the hallway.
He spun and peered around the doorframe into the hallway.
Cassandra stood next to a decorative built-in display shelf, talking to the MI6 director, Walter Sykes.
The man appeared to be annoyed with the woman. He excused himself, leaving her standing there, and disappeared into the ballroom.
Fearghas backed away from the door before Sykes could spot him.
Once the MI6 guy marched past him, Fearghas looked down the hallway again.
Cassandra was gone. A movement caught his eye. Had the built-in shelf shifted?
He entered the hallway, stopped in front of the unit and pressed his hands against the wood framing. It didn’t move. If it was a hidden door, there would be a button, a lever or something to trigger it to open.
He tried to move a statuette to look beneath it. It only moved one way, forward. The shelf unit shuddered and swung inward, revealing a hidden staircase leading upward. The tap, tap of heels on wood rang out somewhere above him.
“I found a hidden door in the hallway. I’m going up.” He started up the stairs and slowed when he didn’t get a response from Ace. “Ace, do you copy?” he said softly.
Nothing.
The walls of the stairwell had to be insulated with something that blocked radio waves. If Catya had gone up the stairs, it would explain why they hadn’t heard from her.
Behind him, the shelf unit door closed slowly. Before it closed completely, the screech of a fire alarm echoed up the stairwell. He couldn’t stop to investigate.
Gut-wrenching fear gripped Fearghas. Too much time had already passed. Catya was in trouble. He could feel it in his bones. He had to get to her before it was too late.
Fearghas took the stairs two at a time, not caring how much noise he made. Time was his enemy.
At the top of the staircase, a long tunnel led to a door at the end.
Cassandra had just reached the door. She shot a glance over her shoulder and then dove through.
I can’t let her hurt Catya.
Fearghas ran as fast as he’d ever run. When he reached the door, he burst through it into what appeared to be…a closet? Or the back of a closet. He went through to the room on the other side and found Cassandra with a blond wig in her hand.
Catya’s wig.
Fearghas charged the woman, gripped her arms and pushed her up against the wall. “Where is she? Where’s Catya? What did you do with her?”
Cassandra’s eyes rounded. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. Who’s Catya?”
“You have her wig,” he growled. “What did you do with her?”
“I found the wig on the ground. I didn’t do anything with your Catya.”
“Lies!” He gripped her so hard he raised her off the ground.
“I swear,” she said. “I saw Walter Sykes come out of the hidden stairwell and came up to see what was here.”
“You’re in with the Sykes and Blackhurst. We know it. We saw Blackhurst leave your flat. Now, tell me where they’ve taken Catya.”
“Please. I don’t know. I’m looking for Blackhurst as well. But I’m not part of their dealings. I work for the king. He tasked me with finding out what Blackhurst, Sykes and Stanhope were up to. He suspects they’re involved in multi-national illegal arms trade.” She gripped his wrists, holding on, her feet dangling. “You have to believe me. And if they have your Catya, you’re wasting your time with me.”
“Why should I believe you?” Fearghas lowered her to the floor, his hands loosening around her arms. Something in her face and voice rang true, but he didn’t want to believe her. He wanted her to tell him where they’d taken Catya.
“You shouldn’t believe me,” she said, “but you also shouldn’t be talking to me when you should be looking for your girl.”
“Where?”
“A lot of foreign dignitaries just came out of here. I suspect Stanhope, Blackhurst and Sykes staged this get-together to cover for some illicit activities with them.” She nodded toward the next room that had rows of chairs lined up. “Maybe Catya found them, and they don’t want her to tell what she saw.”
Fearghas let go of Cassandra and went into the next room. If Catya had stumbled upon their nefarious activities, she would be a liability to them, and they’d want to make sure she never talked.
A door on the opposite end of the room stood open. They’d sent the foreigners down the secret passage, but Stanhope, Blackhurst and Catya hadn’t come down with them. They had to have gone out through the open door.
Fearghas dashed through the door, down a hallway and through a room with windows that overlooked formal gardens at the rear of the house.
Cassandra’s heels clicked against wood flooring as she raced to catch up with him.
Fearghas was about to keep going when a movement in the garden made him look again.
Three shadowy figures moved past hedges, armors and a small pond. The figure in the rear seemed to be carrying something heavy over his shoulder.
A lead weight plummeted to the pit of Fearghas’s belly. That man was carrying a body.
“That’s them,” Cassandra said. “Stanhope has a helicopter pad on the grounds. He must be heading there.”
“I have to stop them,” Fearghas said and ran through the room and down another hallway to a staircase that led to the ground floor. He raced past a laundry room and burst through a back door into a garden.
“Ace, do you copy?” he said as he ran past a fountain.
“Fearghas? Is that you?” Ace’s voice sounded. “Got the rest of the crew here at the van, less you and Catya. Where the hell have you been?”
“In a secret passage and room on the second floor. Stanhope and Blackhurst have Catya. He has a helicopter pad on the grounds out past the rear garden; I think they’re headed for it.”
“Going cross country,” Ace reported. “We’ll have your six.”
Fearghas picked up speed, leaping over hedges and blowing past arbors until he burst into the open.
Ahead, a helicopter rested on a helipad, rotors spinning.
The three men had just reached it. Two of the men leaped inside. The one carrying the body paused to drop his load on the floor of the fuselage.
Ten yards away, Fearghas threw everything he had into reaching that chopper before it left the ground.
The man who’d dropped the body and was climbing into the helicopter suddenly fell backward, landing on his back on the pad.
Fearghas leaped, landed on the man’s chest and threw himself onto the aircraft as it lifted slowly off the ground.
The people in the back were a tangle of arms and legs, black tuxedos and a gold dress.
Catya was at the bottom of the pile, kicking and fighting like a wild cat.
Fearghas grabbed the man on top, wrapped his arm around his throat and yanked him out of the fight, recognizing him as the Deputy Prime Minister Blackhurst.
Blackhurst struggled and fell backward, landing on top of Fearghas so close to the open door that Fearghas could feel the wind whipped up by the rotors. It wasn’t his day to die, but it could be for the man crushing the air from his lungs.
Fearghas bucked, rolled and flung the man out the door. He fell ten feet, landing on the lawn. He came up on his hands and knees, then stood.
“Watch out!” Catya cried. “He’s got a taser.”
Fearghas spun in time to knock the device out of Stanhope’s hand. It skidded across the floor toward Catya as she struggled to sit up.
Stanhope lunged for Fearghas in an attempt to push him out the open door.
The helicopter lurched sideways.
Stanhope landed on Fearghas.
Before Fearghas could throw him off, the man stiffened, jerked and then collapsed, unmoving.
Fearghas rolled him to the side and looked up at Catya who held the taser in her hand, a fierce smile on her face. “That felt good.” She turned to the pilot.
Fearghas shouted, “Wait! Don’t use it on him. He has to land this thing.”
Catya leaned over the back of the pilot’s seat, wrapped her arm around his throat and pulled his headset away from his ear. “Land. Now.”
Applying just enough pressure to his neck to make him a believer, Catya held on until the chopper landed on the grass not far from where it had taken off.
Headlights bounced across the lawn as the MI6 communications van raced toward them.
The man Catya had kicked out of the chopper stood, pointing a gun at the helicopter, seemingly unaware of the van barreling toward him.
The gunman fired, the bullet pinging against the fuselage not far from the open door.
Before he could fire another round, the van plowed into him, throwing him fifteen feet across the lawn. He didn’t get up.
Fearghas nodded. “Good riddance.”
“Shut down the engine,” Catya told the pilot.
He complied.
Catya gave one last squeeze and then released her hold on the man. “Don’t do anything stupid, or I will tase your ass. Now, get out.”
The pilot climbed out of the helicopter, holding his hands in the air.
Hank, Ace, Jasmine and Dmytro piled out of the van.
Hank and Ace ran toward the chopper. Jasmine and Dmytro headed for the Deputy Prime Minister.
Blackhurst raised his hands in the air. “Lord Stanhope went crazy. He tried to kidnap me.”
Fearghas stepped down from the helicopter and turned to help Catya to the ground, pulling her into his arms. “I’ve never been more frightened in my life. Are you all right?”
She nodded and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I am now.”
“Where’s Stanhope?” Hank asked as they came abreast of Fearghas and Catya.
Catya tipped her head toward the man lying on the floor of the chopper.
“Is he dead?” Hank asked, walking over to the man.
“No,” Catya said. “Just living a taste of his own medicine.” She held up the taser. “I think I’ll keep this as a souvenir.”
Fearghas chuckled. “As long as you don’t use it on me. Careful where you aim that thing.”
She looked for a place to tuck the device. “Why do they make women’s clothes without pockets?” Giving up, she dropped the device on the ground and wrapped her arms around Fearghas’s neck. “We did it.”
“Yes, we did,” he said and kissed her.
“What about Sykes?” Ace asked. “Did he get away?”
“Not quite,” a feminine voice called out from the edge of the garden. Cassandra Miles, her hair in disarray, her dress torn and stained, pushed Walter Sykes in front of her, his wrists secured behind his back, a bruise forming on his forehead and sporting a bloody, busted lip. “He was heading for the helicopter and didn’t quite make it.”
Fearghas shook his head. “How did you take down a man who weighs more than you and is a trained combatant? Is there something you haven’t told me?”
“I was fortunate enough to find an equalizer. The gardener left a shovel lying among the hydrangeas.” She gave a crooked grin and glanced down at her hand. “Damn. I broke a nail.”
Fearghas laughed.
Catya frowned. “Isn’t she with them?”
“She assures me she is not. She was tasked by the king to find out what his Deputy Prime Minister was up to and report back to him.”
“But the disk was accessed at her IP address,” Catya said, her frown deepening.
Cassandra’s brow dipped. “What disk?”
“The one they killed to recover.”
“I know nothing about a disk. But if it was accessed at my IP address, Blackhurst must have used my laptop while I was asleep or in the shower. What was on it?”
“The names of the buyers and suppliers of the weapons Stanhope, Blackhurst and Sykes were brokering,” Ace said.
Catya turned to Ace. “Were you able to record their conversations from my listening device?”
Ace shook his head. “Fearghas thinks the rooms you were designed to block radio and cell phone reception. However, the device itself should have retained the recordings.”
“Thank goodness.” Catya pulled the small device out from where she’d placed it near her left breast and handed it to Ace. “Anyone call for police support?”
“They’re on their way,” Sadie said as she joined them. She gave them all one of her mega-watt smiles. “Another successful outcome for the Brotherhood Protectors and friends.” She slid her arm around Hank’s waist and leaned into him. “This team doesn’t even have an office, and they're already kicking ass.”
Hank kissed the top of her head. “Because they are the best.” His gaze fell on Catya. “We could use more skilled warriors on the team. Would you consider joining us?”
Catya looked from Hank to Fearghas and back. “But I’ve primarily worked as an assassin, killing people, not protecting them.”
“You’re more of a protector than you think,” Fearghas said. “You tried to protect Gia Rosolino.”
“And failed,” she reminded him.
“And you were there to get Madison to safety and stayed with her and her father until Hank and Sadie took over.”
Catya nodded. “Still. I have enemies.”
“We’ve all made enemies. It comes with the territory,” Fearghas said. “The difference is that we have each other’s backs.” He took her hand. “Think about it. Hank only hires the best.”
Catya looked at Hank. “You really want me?”
Hank nodded. “You more than proved yourself on this mission, and you weren’t even working for the Brotherhood Protectors.”
Fearghas pressed his lips to her ear. “Say yes.” He held his breath, sending a silent prayer to the heavens.
Catya drew in a deep breath. “I’ve always worked alone, but to hell with that. Yes. I’d be honored to be a part of the Brotherhood Protectors. I promise to do right by the team.”
Fearghas swept her up in his arms and spun her around, joy filling his heart.
When he finally set her on the ground, she looked up into his face. “We make a good team.”
He nodded. “A damned good team.”