Seduction Game

  Nick stood—or tried to stand.

  Black spots. Crushing pressure.

  Blinding pain dropped him to his knees again. Strong arms grabbed him, drew him to his feet, pulled him back. When they released him, his legs gave out completely, and he fell, catching just a glimpse of Rossiter as he inserted a breathing tube into Holly’s airway. Then the world around him faded to black.

  * * *

  Nick heard sirens and men’s voices.

  “We’ve got multiple broken ribs and a right pneumothorax.”

  “Get a chest tube ready.”

  “His BP is dropping. It looks like they beat the shit out of him.”

  “He could have internal bleeding. Open those fluids up wide.”

  Nick opened his eyes, found himself inside an ambulance, an IV in one arm, an oxygen mask over his face, electrodes stuck to his chest. McBride sat nearby watching him, still wearing tactical gear. The two paramedics who’d been helping Holly were now working on him.

  But where was Holly?

  “Holly?” He croaked out her name, the pressure on his chest unbearable.

  “She’s en route to the trauma center.” McBride’s face was lined with worry. “Rossiter, the other paramedic, is with her.”

  “Is she . . . ?”

  “She was still alive when they took off a few minutes ago.”

  Thank God.

  Nick closed his eyes, offered up a silent prayer for her. She was all that mattered, the only thing he cared about now. He couldn’t lose her.

  When he opened his eyes again, he found McBride still watching him. “Sorry about the cuffs. There’s still a warrant out for you. I have no choice but to restrain you.”

  Nick hadn’t noticed. He didn’t care.

  One of the paramedics looked down at him. “I need to insert a tube into your chest wall to let some of the trapped air out. Your lung has collapsed.”

  Nick nodded, gritting his teeth against the sharp pain of the tube as it was thrust between two broken ribs and into his side.

  Then he was out again.

  He woke to the sound of someone shouting his name. He opened his eyes to find a woman in green scrubs looking down at him.

  “Mr. Andris, the CT scan showed bruising on your spleen and liver. You’re going to be staying here so that we can keep you under observation. We’ll be taking you up to your room in a moment. We’re giving you morphine for the pain. Let us know if you’re not getting adequate relief.”

  “Holly?” His voice was muffled by an oxygen mask.

  But the woman had already turned away. “Is he going to remain in restraints?”

  “For the time being, yes, ma’am.” That was McBride’s voice. “We’re posting security outside his door as well.”

  Nick drew as deep a breath as he could. “McBride!”

  McBride’s face swam into view. “What is it?”

  “Holly . . . How is she?”

  “She’s still in surgery. We haven’t heard anything.”

  “I want . . . to see her.”

  “That’s not going to happen—at least not for a while. You’re in Colorado Springs at Memorial Hospital, and it looks like you’ll be here for a few days. She was flown to the level-one trauma center in Denver.”

  Nick squeezed his eyes shut, infuriated to feel so damned helpless. “I need to know. When you hear how she is . . . I need to know.”

  McBride nodded, a muscle working in his jaw. “I’ll keep you informed. The CIA is taking over this case. They’ll be handling your security detail. I expect someone is going to have a lot of questions for you.”

  Fuck the Agency. Fuck their questions.

  “I would have done anything . . . to keep her safe.”

  McBride looked like he had a few things he’d like to say, but whatever they were, he kept them to himself. “I’ll let you know when I hear anything.”

  As they wheeled him to his room, still cuffed to the railing, Nick closed his eyes and prayed.

  God, please, not Holly.

  * * *

  Zach entered the surgery waiting area and saw the entire gang sitting together. Even Derek Tower and Alex Carmichael were there. They took up most of the room, the men standing, the women sitting together, some of them in tears.

  Natalie saw him and waddled over to him. He wrapped his arms around her, held a hand against her pregnant belly, the feel of her precious in his arms, a sadness he hadn’t been able to shake gripping his chest. “Any news?”

  Natalie shook her head, tears in her eyes. “How did this happen?”

  “It’s a long story. Let’s see if we can get a private waiting room.” They were going to find out sooner or later. It was better that they hear it from him than read about it in the papers.

  Reece went off to speak with one of the nursing staff, and soon they found themselves crowded into a small room with a table and six plastic chairs.

  Zach ran a hand over the stubble on his face, feeling drained. “God, I’m not even sure where to begin. There are so many missing pieces.”

  “I think we can fill in a lot of them,” Corbray said. “Tower and I got our hands on the surveillance feed Holly set up in the minivan and listened to the whole thing. I’ll tell you right now, Holly is a hero in my book.”

  “Hell, yeah, she is,” Darcangelo said.

  Zach figured he ought to dive in. “I guess I’ll start by saying that Holly is a CIA non-cover officer. She’s been working for the CIA since she was eighteen.”

  Surprised gasps, astonished glances.

  “Holly is a CIA agent?” Kara gaped at him, wide-eyed.

  “A CIA officer—with top-secret security clearance.”

  “Our Holly?” Tessa asked.

  Zach nodded. “Our Holly.”

  “She’s a damned good one, too,” Corbray added, an edge of emotion in his voice.

  Zach knew he was beating himself up for not reaching her sooner.

  Zach told them everything he knew about Dudaev’s murder and Holly’s subsequent abduction. Some of it he’d learned through his own investigation, and some he’d heard from Nguyen, who was clinging to life in the ICU.

  “Somehow Andris realized Holly was CIA, too. He refused to terminate her.”

  “Thank God for that!” Natalie exclaimed.

  “Somehow she got away from him, but that’s when she ran into Dudaev’s men. Apparently, this Kramer guy knew where Nick had taken Holly and sent them up to the cabin to kill both of them.”

  Zach told them how Holly had then been assigned to remain with Andris. “Nguyen, who has been investigating Bauer for a couple of years now, says the Agency suspected Andris had been set up by his boss, but they didn’t know who Bauer’s accomplice was. They hoped the man would try to make a move on the two of them and that Andris and Holly would then be able to expose him.”

  “The CIA used them as bait,” Laura said.

  “It worked. Bauer told Kramer he was sending Nguyen to Colorado Springs to negotiate with Andris, and Kramer sent his men to kill Nguyen and ambush and kill Andris and Holly. Nick ruined that plan by not taking Holly with him, so Kramer tried to torture her location out of him.”

  “Remind me never to complain about my job,” Matt said. “Never thought I’d say it, but there are worse people to work for than Tom Trent.”

  Corbray picked up the story. “Kramer tried to get Andris to tell him where Holly was, not knowing that Holly had put a GPS transmitter and micro listening device in Andris’s jeans. The whole thing is recorded, from the moment they left the hotel where they’d been hiding to the moment we shut it off, and I’m telling you, it’s some brutal stuff. Kramer and his guys were debating whether to burn Andris bit by bit with a blowtorch or to sodomize and castrate him. That’s when Holly moved in on her own.”

  Corbray told them how Holly had been in touch with him, how she’d done recon and found a good place from which to stage a rescue. “I told her to wait, but she didn’t. She went in and took out four men to get
to him.”

  “She’s hot and a badass,” Alex said.

  Derek glared at him. “If you want to talk about Ms. Bradshaw around me, you’d better show her respect. She’s worth a helluva lot more to this country than one foul-mouthed journalist.”

  Corbray went on. “Andris hid Holly and took over after that.”

  “Wasn’t he injured? How could he fight?” Kat asked.

  “You’d be surprised what adrenaline can do in a combat situation. Andris took the rest of them out, but Kramer climbed some scaffolding at the rear of the building when Andris was engaged in close-quarters combat. When Holly saw the red dot from the laser sight on his chest, she pushed him out of the way and . . . she was hit in the side.”

  “The bullet entered at an angle,” Rossiter said, lifting his arm. “It went in here, then exited beneath her scapula. If it had been an inch in the other direction, it would have been a graze. If it had gone an inch deeper, we would have lost her right then.”

  For a moment, no one spoke.

  “Why was Holly with Dudaev that night?” Sophie asked.

  Derek spoke up. “It’s her job to do whatever it takes to get close to men like Dudaev and set them up for surveillance with listening devices and GPS transmitters. She’s an expert at gathering intelligence through intimate interaction with people.”

  Zach watched while that revelation sank in, comprehension dawning.

  “All those men she slept with—she was working?” Ramirez asked.

  Corbray nodded. “You got it.”

  “Isn’t all of this classified?” Sheridan asked.

  “It is—or it was. Bauer was arrested trying to board an airplane about an hour ago. Before he left, he burned Holly and Andris in an email to some media contacts in Washington, outing them to the world, putting them in considerable peril. This is going to be big news by tonight.”

  Alex stood, notepad in hand. “If it’s going to be big news, then I’m going to get on it. Someone has to tell the story right.”

  Darcangelo held up his hand to stop Alex. “There’s something she wanted me to tell all of you. Before she lost consciousness, she apologized for not being able to tell us the truth. She said she never meant to mislead us.”

  “She shouldn’t apologize for that.” Laura dabbed the corners of her eyes with a tissue. “She was serving her country.”

  Darcangelo took Tessa’s hand. “That’s what I told her. She also asked me to tell you . . . that she loves you all. She wants you women to have her clothes and shoes if she doesn’t make it.”

  Tessa laughed through her tears. “That’s our Holly—thinking of her shoes.”

  The other women laughed, too, all of them in tears.

  “But she’s going to make it,” Sophie said. “She has to make it. Is she pregnant?”

  “No.” Zach’s swallowed the hard lump in his throat. “I think you should know that she and Andris are involved. Holly loves him, and he seems to love her, too.”

  Corbray nodded. “Yeah, he does. I know we’ve all been hating on him, but after listening to what he went through, I’ve changed my mind. At one point when they were beating the hell out of him, Kramer asked him if Holly was worth his suffering. He could barely speak, but he said, ‘Yes. She’s worth anything.’”

  Zach hadn’t known this. “He wants to know how she’s doing.”

  “I volunteer to keep him updated,” Kara said.

  “Count me in,” Sophie said.

  The door opened and a doctor in surgical scrubs walked in, mask hanging around his neck, the grave expression on his face putting a knot in Zach’s stomach. “You’re Holly Bradshaw’s party? Are her next of kin here?”

  Zach lied, motioned vaguely toward Tessa and Laura, both of whom had blond hair. “Yes—along with the officers investigating her case.”

  “How is she?” the women asked, almost as one.

  “She made it through surgery, but her condition is extremely critical. We had to give her nineteen units of blood. The bullet shattered one rib, but that rib deflected the bullet away from her heart. She lost part of her lung. If she makes it through the next twenty-four hours, we’ll have a much better idea. She’s in the ICU now. We’re doing our best to keep her stable and comfortable.”

  “Can we see her?” Kara asked.

  “Who here is family?”

  Laura cleared her throat. “We all are—well, except for Alex. He’s a reporter.”

  Soft laughter from the women.

  The doctor looked like he didn’t believe them but was too damned tired to argue with them. “You can’t all go in at once. Two at a time should be fine, but just for a few minutes. She’s not conscious yet, and she needs rest.”

  The doctor left them alone.

  Zach drew his wife into his arms again, kissed her hair. “Thank God.”

  They’d come this far, and right now it felt like a miracle.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Holly only knew that one moment there was nothing, and the next there was pain and confusion and noise. She couldn’t seem to open her eyes or talk or move.

  “You’re on a ventilator, sweetie. Just lie still. We’ll be getting you more pain medication in a moment.”

  Where was she? Why did she hurt so much? Who was talking to her?

  Then the world faded again.

  Warm fingers held hers. Hands stroked her cheeks. Soothing voices faded in and out. It sounded like some of them were crying.

  “Holly, can you hear me? It’s Kara. Reece and I are right here beside you. We love you, sweetie.”

  “Holly, it’s me, Julian. How’s my favorite superhero? Tessa and I are here for you, and we’re not going anywhere.”

  “She looks so pale, Julian. When is she going to wake up?”

  “I’m not sure you can hear me, chula, but you’re gonna pull through this, and we’re going to be with you all the way.”

  “It’s Kat, Holly. Gabe and I are praying for you. We’re holding an inipi ceremony for you tonight. Most of the gang will be there.”

  “Hey, Holly, it’s Natalie. Never mind my crying. I can’t seem to help it. I’m just so glad you’re going to be okay. We’re all proud of you, aren’t we, Zach?”

  “Yeah, we are. I heard that Andris—Nick—is stable. He’s going to be okay, thanks to you. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “It’s Marc, honey. Can you hear me? We’ve got you. Everything is going to be okay. You just rest and get strong again.”

  “Holly, your parents are here now. Isn’t that wonderful? The other nurses and I have brought them up to date, and they’ll be back here in a second to see you.”

  She heard the words. At times, she even understood them.

  But then she was drifting again.

  After that, the dreams began, dark dreams, terrible dreams. A man dead beside her, bullet holes in his head. Another man aiming a gun at her.

  She tried to run, but couldn’t.

  Nick!

  Where was he? They’d tortured him, hurt him.

  She remembered the laser dot on his chest, blood on his skin.

  Nick!

  “Don’t try to talk. You’re still on the ventilator,” said a kind voice. “We need more morphine.”

  Then she felt like she was falling, falling into silence, darkness, more dreams.

  Sometime later, she opened her eyes, found herself in a semi-dark room surrounded by sounds. The soft murmur of voices. The beep of an IV pump that needed changing. The hiss of oxygen through a ventilator.

  Slowly, it began to make sense. She was in the hospital. She’d been shot. She’d pushed Nick out of the line of fire and had caught a round in her side.

  Well, that explained the pain.

  But where was Nick? Was he okay?

  A nurse injected something into her IV, and her thoughts unraveled again.

  It was arguing that woke her next.

  “I had to get up at six to catch a flight from Miami. I just want to get back to the
hotel for some room service and a nap—and a glass of wine.”

  “You can sleep here. They have little fold-out beds. There’s a cafeteria.”

  “You’re not really suggesting I sleep on one of those things. How can I be sure it’s clean? What if there are bed bugs? Besides, their cafeteria doesn’t have wine.”

  “I can’t stay with her. I’ve got an important meeting with the marshals service and that penny-ante security company—Cobra, or whatever it’s called. I want to find out why I wasn’t kept up to date on the situation.”

  Her parents were fighting over who should have to stay with her. Couldn’t they find it in themselves to care about her even now?

  “An important meeting? You’re retired, for God’s sake! You haven’t had an important meeting since the last time I took you to court. Besides, it sounds like Holly’s work was classified above your pay grade.”

  While they continued to bicker, she opened her eyes, searched for the call button, hoping to get one of the nurses to send them away. But the nurses must have already heard, because one of them stepped into Holly’s room.

  “I’m going to have to ask the two of you to take your discussion into the hallway,” she said. “This is the Intensive Care Unit, not family court.”

  “Do you know who I am?” her father asked.

  “You could be the president or the king of Siam for all I care. I’m the head nurse, and that trumps everything else. If you don’t leave, I’ll have security escort you from the grounds.”

  Holly closed her eyes, a pain building in her chest that had nothing to do with being shot, tears spilling down her cheeks.

  * * *

  Even drugged out of his mind on morphine, Nick found it hard to sleep. All he wanted was to see Holly, to be with her, to know that she was going to be okay. But he was still cuffed to his bed, unable to leave his room except for the repeated ultrasounds the doctor had ordered. Hell, he had to get one of the Agency guards outside his door to unlock him just to take a piss.

  What Nick would have done without Holly’s network of friends, he didn’t know. Her girlfriends took turns calling several times a day to give him updates. He knew when her condition was downgraded to critical but stable, knew when she’d regained consciousness, knew that she’d asked about him, writing his name on a pad of paper because she was still on the ventilator and couldn’t talk.