Page 41 of Croatia Collateral

Giva lifted her chin defiantly. “Evan taught me how to throw knives, and he put me through self-defense training.”

Dax pursed his lips and shook his head at Giva. “All of which has proven a waste of money and time. You couldn’t even defend yourself against a couple of Russians?”

“I wouldn’t have had to if you’d taken me with you,” she said, pouting like a true spoiled brat.

“I told you to stay at the hotel.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “How did you lose the bodyguards?”

She snorted. “They were playing cards outside my door. I slipped out onto the balcony and climbed down the fire escape ladder. Bet you didn’t know there was one, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. I’ll have to fire the bodyguards.” Dax turned to Yamaguchi. “This is Sasha, my girlfriend.”

“Fiancée,” Giva corrected as the man who’d taken her knives selected one and sliced through the zip tie. “You promised we’d get married soon. That’s a proposal if I ever heard one.”

A muscle in Yamaguchi’s jaw twitched, and her lips pressed tightly together. “You were to come alone.”

“I did,” Dax said. “I gave Sasha specific orders to stay at the hotel while I conducted business.”

Yamaguchi met and held Dax’s gaze. “We cannot allow her to leave.”

“Then she’ll stay with me,” he said.

“You don’t understand,” Yamaguchi said. “She can never leave. She knows too much and now has seen too much.”

“Seen what?” Giva continued to play the part of the entitled girlfriend of one of the wealthiest men on the planet. “A bunch of TV screens showing boring documentaries? What are you afraid of? That I’ll tell someone that you’re brainwashing Russians with documentaries?” She snorted. “Please. I’ve been inside the home of the kingpin of a major Columbian drug cartel. This is nothing.”

Dax met Yamaguchi’s glare with one of his own. “She stays, and no one hurts her or I’m out, and I take my toys with me.”

“Or you can let me go, and he can stay for your boring indoctrination.” She ran her gaze over the Japanese woman from head to toe and lifted a corner of her lip in disdain. “I have nothing to be jealous of here. I can clearly see you’re not Evan’s type.”

Yamaguchi’s eyes narrowed to slits. She glanced at her watch and back to Evan. “Run the test, and we will discuss your mistress later.”

“We discuss now,” Dax said, “or I won’t run the test or the final EMP targeting Shanghai.”

Holy smokes. Giva clamped her mouth shut to keep her jaw from dropping.

Targeting Shanghai, a city of twenty-five million people, with an electromagnetic pulse would be catastrophic. With no electricity, no transportation other than bicycles and no way to evacuate that many people, it wouldn’t be long before chaos ensued.

“Signore Maas is a businessman and has made more money than any of us. He wouldn’t jeopardize the operation because of a woman,” Galeotti said. “Let her stay.”

Yamaguchi shifted her glare to Giva. “She stays down here.”

“I’m as serious as a heart attack,” Dax warned the Russians. “You hurt her, and this operation is over.”

Yamaguchi led the way up the steps to the room overlooking the lower floor.

Dax followed.

Giva was there, but she couldn’t help him in the room above. She gauged her chances with the people remaining on the floor with her. She wasn’t worried about the oligarchs. Though the Italian and German might put up more of a fight, it was the four Russian bodyguards she’d be hard-pressed to neutralize. They’d already proved much stronger than her. But she wouldn’t be surprised this time. She’d be ready.

She paced the room, her gaze going to Dax, wondering what the Japanese woman expected him to do. What test was he supposed to run? Would it require a password only Maas would know? They’d know for certain he was a phony when he couldn’t access whatever system they were running.

Dax sat at a workstation with a computer.

Giva couldn’t see what he was doing with his hands, but he leaned forward, placing his eye close to what appeared to be a biometric scanner. Either a retinal or iris scanner, neither of which would work with Dax’s eye.

After a moment, he leaned back and said something to Yamaguchi.

Her eyes narrowed, and she nodded her head toward the scanner as if telling him to try again.

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