Page 176 of Protecting You

She smiled. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? When you hire people to dig stuff up, you never know what they might find. I’m curious. Was the lighter a gift from her?”

He curled his fist around it. Though he gave no answer, the flash of surprise in his gaze confirmed her guess.

“You must’ve been heartbroken,” Alyssa said, “considering the lengths you’re taking to avenge her death. That sounds a lot like love to me.”

Or some misguided, perverted version of it, anyway.

“My father was acting on the intelligence he’d been given. He didn’t know the intel was bad.”

“You think that excuses it?” Ghazi opened his palm and lit the lighter again. “You think I care what the spy says?”

“You’re right about the Russian, though.” Alyssa chose to ignore Ghazi’s aggressive tone. “He passed on bad intel to protect his position in the SVR.”

“He will die. Your father will die. Return to your work, or you will die as well. You have”—Ghazi pocketed the lighter and checked his watch—“thirty minutes to give me access to the control system. And then, for every fifteen minutes you make me wait, your little friend will lose a finger.”

She spun back to the computer.

What now, Lord?

She navigated to the personnel system, thankful that, though on the front-end, the interfaces would look completely different, their code looked identical.

She typed a quick message in the same line she’d been using before.

DRONS 30 M. STOP THEM.

And then…

CNTRY CLB + DC TRGTS.

The Pentagon and Langley would have the security necessary to shoot them down, especially if they were forewarned.

Would Alyssa have the strength to sit by while Benson chopped off Peri’s fingers?

She couldn’t allow that.

But once Ghazi had access to the system, he wouldn’t need to keep the child or her alive.

What should she do?

She didn’t know.She didn’t know.

CHAPTERFORTY-TWO

Callan peered through binoculars at the small island, a smudge of black breaking up the moonlight reflecting off the Atlantic.

If not for the moon, the strip of land would be hidden completely.

A boat, lit up like downtown during the holidays, slipped around the south side of the island and disappeared.

When it was gone, there wasn’t a single light ahead. Thank God for the tracker that indicated Alyssa’s location. Without it, they would never have found her.

That the tracker worked, and that Ghazi hadn’t found it, were the first miracles of the operation. For Alyssa and Peri to survive, they would need many more miracles before this was over.

Brooklynn had relayed Alyssa’s most recent message. Thirty minutes. And the country club was a target, along with DC, though what in DC was anybody’s guess.

Not the hotel, since the Russian wouldn’t be there yet.

But there were plenty to choose from.

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