I looked to Frost, thinking he’d back me up, but his expression told me that he was now leaning Dutch’s way. “Okay, Rivers,” he said. “But if you go in alone, we can’t risk the wire or the camera. You’ll be on your own.”
I scowled at both of them, but I knew I’d just been outvoted. “Fine,” I said. “But remember he’ll look to take you by surprise, Dutch. And he’ll definitely try to test you, so please, be on the alert.”
Dutch leaned in and kissed me lightly on the lips.
“Blech,” we heard from across the room. “You two should get a room.”
I backed away from my sweetheart and glared hard at Mandy. That woman was getting on my last nerve.
“Easy, killer,” Dutch whispered with a chuckle. “Remember, it’s all for the cause.”
“Easy for you to say,” I growled, and left the kitchen to stew over Mandy and worry about Dutch.
As it happened, I was decidedly less worried when Dutch left for his meeting with Grinkov, because he wasn’t able to drive a car. The pummeling he’d taken to his ribs had made it difficult for him to raise his arms and steer the wheel, especially since he was now refusing all pain meds beyond two Tylenol every few hours. So Frost donned a chauffeur’s uniform and drove Dutch to Grinkov’s offices, which were located only a few miles away from Des Vries’s office, which allowed me to get away from Mandy for a few hours to go along with them as far as that and get dropped off downtown. The plan was to meet back at Des Vries’s office after the meeting and brief me and Frost about how it had gone.
Mandy was left back at the condo, locked inside and with a guard posted at the door, lest she get any ideas about venturing out on her own.
After the boys had dropped me, I paced the floor again until I had an idea, and I sat down at the desk and closed my eyes, focusing on Dutch’s energy to make sure he was okay.
To my immense relief I could clearly feel him in the ether—our link was so strong it was nearly telepathic. I smiled because I had the clear sense that Dutch was thinking of me too. I don’t believe he knew I was tuning in on him, but I could feel him reciprocate that strong connection to me, which helped me all the more to figure out what was happening around him.
Inspired, I picked up the phone and called Frost. “You okay?” he asked me.
“I’m fine,” I told him. “I just wanted you to know that I’m tuning in on Dutch.”
There was a pause, then, “I’m not sure what that means.”
“It means that we’re no longer totally blind to what’s happening in this meeting between Dutch and Grinkov.”
“Really?” Frost said, his tone interested. “What’re you seeing?”
I took a deep breath and felt out the ether. “Dutch’s energy is calm, but guarded, which is to be expected. He’s being careful, but he’s confident, which means that Grinkov hasn’t tried to test him yet. I can sense Grinkov there, and his energy feels guarded but engaged. And there’s another person in the room. . . .” My voice trailed off as I focused on the newest member to the group.
“You there?” Frost asked me.
“Yeah,” I told him. “I was just trying to get a bead on the other guy.”
“Who is it?”
I shrugged, then realized Frost couldn’t see me. “I don’t know. I’d guess him to be a bit older than Dutch and Grinkov, maybe by ten years or so. He’s also an extremely powerful man. I’m thinking he’s the head of something big, and he’s loaded. We’re talking big money here.”
“Do you think it’s Boklovich?”
I frowned. “It could be.”
“What’re the initials you get for him?”
I realized Frost was trying to help by pointing me this way and that, but my radar didn’t work in the way he thought it did, and his constant questions were only serving to distract me. “I don’t know,” I said tersely. “I don’t get names or initials.”
“Okay, so can you describe him physically?”
I sighed. For the record, linking in quasi-telepathically to a meeting between three people miles away is really, really hard. “The most I can tell you is that he feels big.”
“Huh?” Frost said. “You mean like fat?”
“No . . . well . . . maybe . . . but more like he has a big presence. He might be a large man, it’s really hard to tell.”
“How about complexion or hair color?”
I rolled my eyes. It’s not like I had a video camera in my head, peering into the room. “You’ll have to wait for Dutch to give you that. I can only describe his energy.”
Frost paused, probably taking that in before asking me his next question. “Is there anything else you can tell me that might be relevant?”
“Yeah. It feels like the guy with the power is directing the meeting. Grinkov feels like he wants to defer to him. If I had to guess, I’d say that he’s either brought along Boklovich or one of Boklovich’s henchmen.”
“That could be a good thing,” Frost said.
“Or it could be bad.”
Frost blew out his own sigh. “Okay. Keep your ESP pointed at the meeting and call me if you get anything else.”
“Got it.”
I hung up and refocused all my attention to the meeting. I kept my radar trained on Dutch, because I was worried about him and would be able to tell in a moment if things turned ugly. His energy remained calm but alert, and there was also a feeling there of being pleased with how the flow of the meeting was going. I took this as a very positive sign.
An hour later I called Frost. “They’re wrapping it up.”
“That was quick,” he said. “I was prepared to wait another couple of hours.”
“It was a good meeting, and they accomplished what they wanted to. We’ll have Dutch fill us in.”
“He’s coming out of the building now,” he told me. I felt a wave of relief. “We’re on our way back to you. Sit tight and we’ll see you in a bit.”
I leaned back in the chair and put my feet up with an exhausted sigh. Focusing my radar on Dutch for so long had really taken it out of me, and in about three deep breaths I’d drifted off to sleep.
I couldn’t have been asleep for long, because the next thing I knew, I was awake and in a full state of panic. I couldn’t breathe and my windpipe was being squeezed closed while something wrapped itself painfully around my neck.
Flailing my arms and legs instinctively did nothing to ease the terrible constriction. My hands then flew to my throat, pulling at the piece of cord digging into my skin. My mouth opened and I tried to gasp for any amount of air, but none came.
I dug my nails into the crevice between the cord and my skin, pulling and tearing at it in desperation. Excruciating pain vibrated straight down my index finger as the nail caught and was ripped away from the finger. Darkness started to cloud the edges of my vision, and my ears filled with the sound of my pounding heart.
I kicked again at the desk, my heel making a thunderous noise on the wood top, and then, in one last moment of clarity, I thought to bend my knees and hook my heels on the edge of the desk. Using all my reserve strength, I shoved away from the desk, pushing the chair into the person standing behind me pulling hard on the cord.
My assailant stumbled backward, pulling me and the chair too. As if in slow motion I felt myself tip all the way back, and the chair’s two front wheels left the ground. In an instant, the tension on the cord around my neck eased and I took a ragged, desperate breath before my head hit the corner of the cabinet. A lightning bolt of pain erupted in my head, and then the darkness took me.
I woke up to an argument. “Call them!” I heard Dutch shout from right above me.
“I’m calling the doctor who treated you.”
“Goddammit, Frost!” my fiancé roared. “You call the fucking ambulance now, or you’ll need to call another one for yourself!”
“Stop yelling!” I croaked, my hand going straight to my head, which was sticky and wet.
“Jesus!” Dutch whispered, and he moved m
y hand back down to the floor. “Don’t move, Abs. We’re getting you some help.” And then in a much more terse whisper he said, “I mean it, Frost. You call for an ambulance now!”
I managed to open one eye. Frost was holding the phone to his ear, looking very unsure and a little pale. “We’ll blow the mission,” he said softly.
“Fuck the mission!” Dutch snarled.
“No,” I said, moving my hand to Dutch’s. “I’m okay.”
Dutch’s attention came back to me, and in his eyes I saw panic and worry and anger. “You’re definitely not okay, Edgar,” he said frankly. His fingers then brushed my neck, which was competing with my head for what could hurt the most. And then the pain from my lost fingernail kicked in again and it was a three-way tie.
“The doc can be here in five minutes,” Frost told Dutch. “She’s alert, talking, and coherent, so why don’t we let him examine her, and if he wants her to go to the hospital, then I won’t hesitate to call an ambulance or take her myself.”
I closed my eyes again. The world was starting to spin and I thought I could be sick, which would be seriously bad news given the state of my throat. “She’s bleeding pretty bad,” Dutch insisted.
I felt Frost step close to me, and gentle fingers probed around my temple. “She might need a few stitches.”
“Oh, great,” I muttered. “I just got the staples out of my head a month ago, and now I have to go through ten days of bedhead again?”
“See?” Frost said lightly. “She’s even making jokes! She’ll be fine, Rivers.”
“Fuck you, Frost.”
“Please shut up,” I told them. “You’re giving me a headache worse than the one I already have.”
The doctor arrived about five minutes later. He told me to lie very still and inspected my limbs and the back of my neck. After determining that I had no serious injury to my spine from the fall out of the chair, he instructed Frost to carry me to the couch. I groaned when he set me down. So much hurt that it was hard to focus.
The doctor tended first to my noggin, which I gathered was much less seriously injured than it looked. “Head wounds always bleed a lot,” he said.
“Are you going to give me stitches?”
“Yes, but not the kind you’re thinking of. I’ve got a liquid-based medical adhesive that we can use, which will minimize the scar and allow you to take a shower.”
I gave his arm a pat to say thank you, because frankly it hurt to talk.
Next he examined my throat. “You’re very lucky, Ms. Cooper. If the cord used to strangle you had been an inch lower, it would have likely broken your hyoid and there’d be nothing I could do for you.”
“It hurts to swallow,” I told him.
“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m sure it does. The muscles around your larynx and esophagus have been bruised. You’ll be sore for a few days, but otherwise you should be fine.”
“How bad is my finger?”
The doctor lifted my hand to inspect it. “The nail will grow back, but that will likely cause you the most discomfort over the next few days. I will put the same liquid bandage over the raw skin to act as a temporary buffer against the elements, and recommend that you take one of Agent Rivers’s pain pills now, and then again before you go to sleep tonight.”
“You’re sure she doesn’t need a CT scan or something?” asked my oh-so-protective fiancé.
The doctor smiled kindly at him. “Her pupils are normal and she seems quite coherent. Also, the bruising around the gash in her head is minimal. I think that her temple only grazed the corner of the cabinet, and it was the sudden rush of blood flow to her head when her assailant let go that caused her to black out. With some rest I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
Frost gave Dutch a look that said, “See? I was right to call the doctor instead of the ambulance!”
Dutch gave Frost a look that said, “Yeah? Well, fuck you anyway.”
Frost helped me into the limo and the three of us drove back to the condo in silence. No one had yet asked me what had happened in the office, for which I was grateful, because that would mean I’d have to talk, and that hurt. Still, Frost had given me a black shoelace that he and Dutch had found still wrapped around my neck when they’d come into the suite and found me on the floor.
I could read Frost’s expression when he’d handed it to me. He was hoping I could tune in on it to identify my attacker. The guy’d been watching too many lame movies about psychics or something if he thought I could get anything off a shoelace.
When we got to the condo, the agent guarding Mandy checked in with Frost, then made a very quick exit. I had no doubt that he found her company as enjoyable as we did.
Frost carried me to the bedroom with Dutch right behind. Dutch handed me one of his pain pills, and Frost hurried to get me a glass of water. After considering the enormous pill, and the hard time I had swallowing even a tiny sip of water, Dutch kindly took the pill into the kitchen, and returned with a small cup of very smooth ice cream. “I mashed up the pill and blended it into a smoothie, just like you did for me the other day.”
I smiled. He’d been on to me from the start. I managed to get most of the sweet dessert down and then I laid back on the pillows and shut my eyes. I was asleep within seconds.
When I woke up, the room had the dusky feeling of late afternoon. I blinked tiredly, still feeling very groggy, and pushed up from the pillows, wincing as I felt the soreness in my upper shoulders and back from the struggle that morning.
“Hey,” said a familiar baritone.
I looked to the corner of the room. Dutch was sitting in one of the chairs, his face hidden in shadow. “Hey,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“You feeling better?”
I nodded.
“Are you up for telling me what happened?”
I nodded again. “Frost?”
Dutch sighed. “Yeah. He should probably hear it from you.”
He got up and left the room, returning a minute later with the CIA agent in tow. “How’re you feeling?” Frost asked.
“She’s better,” Dutch said crisply.
Ah, so these two hadn’t made up while I’d been napping. “Play nice,” I begged them.
Dutch looked chagrined. “Sorry.”
When they were both seated, I took a notepad off the side table and began to write out what had happened at the office, peeling off the pages as I wrote in large block letters and handing them to Dutch, who read them and then handed them off to Frost.
“Did you see who attacked you?” Dutch asked me when I’d finished.
I shook my head.
“Did he say anything to you while he was strangling you?”
Again I shook my head.
Frost asked, “How do you know it was a he?”
“Strong,” I whispered.
“And you didn’t hear anything or see anything that might give you a clue as to who they were?” Dutch asked.
I shook my head.
Frost tapped his finger on the arm of the chair. “What about your radar? Did you pick up anything off the shoelace?”
I sighed, reined in my impatience at his ignorance, tapped my temple, and shook my head.
“What does that mean?” Frost asked, looking at Dutch to see if he understood.
“She can’t pick up anything off a shoelace, for Christ’s sake, Frost,” my fiancé growled. “Jesus, what movies have you been watching?”
If my throat weren’t killing me, I would have laughed out loud, especially at the way Frost’s face flushed bright red. Of course, my fiancé forgot that only three years ago he’d been just as ignorant.
Frost cleared his throat and leaned forward to put his hands into a steeple and rest his chin on them. “That’s the second attack on your life in the past few days, Cooper,” he finally said.
Dutch looked sharply at me. “What’s he mean, second attack?”
I knew Dutch had forgotten Kozahkov’s assassin’s hail of bullets, which had fallen heavily on my side
of the car, so I held my arms like I was shooting a rifle to remind him.
“Send her home,” he said quietly after a pause.
“What? Why?” I demanded, too loudly for my throat to handle. My hand flew to my neck and I winced.
“You want me to take Cooper off the case?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head vehemently, which was not a comfortable thing, let me assure you. “No!” I whispered, glaring hard at Frost. “Do not!”
Frost’s gaze was pivoting back and forth between me and Dutch like he was watching a tennis match.
“Do not!” I said at the top of my voice—which wasn’t very loud. I added a determined finger point at him too, just to let him know I meant business.
“I can go it alone from here,” Dutch argued.
I was so mad, I threw the pad of paper at him. It hit his knee and bounced harmlessly to the floor. “Need me!” I whispered desperately.
But Dutch wouldn’t look at me. His mind was made up and I was furious because every ounce of my intuition told me the deadly outcome if Dutch attempted to go it alone.
Frost eyed me like he might be considering sending me home and I moved off the bed and over to him. Kneeling down, I literally begged him. “Please!” I cried, then pointed at Dutch. “Won’t come back!”
Frost held my gaze and I took his hand, squeezing it hard, willing him to keep me on the mission. “Someone’s trying to kill you, Cooper,” he said softly. “You’re definitely a target, and so far, Rivers is pulling off Des Vries’s identity. Maybe he should go it alone.”
I glared hard at him and shook my head vigorously again, mindless of the pain to my sore muscles. “No!” I cried and pointed to my temple, shaking my head.
“I’ll be fine,” Dutch told him. “Really, Frost. I can handle it.”
My eyes filled with tears. I wanted to scream, and had I been able to, I know I would have. But in that moment something in Frost’s expression changed, and he seemed to read my sense of urgency and understand what I was trying to say to him. “Your radar is telling you that if he goes in alone, he won’t come back out?”