Page 123 of Close Pursuit

The woman came closer and leaned down close enough for Katie to smell a hint of vodka on her breath beneath the coffee. “Tell me why, little American bird, when I call my…associates…to let them know I have you and baby, within minutes my phone starts ringing.”

“Who was calling you?” Katie asked carefully.Pease let it be Alex.

“First I get a call from the FSB.The fucking FSB,” she hissed.

Katie jolted. “What didtheywant?”

“They offer to pay me a great deal of money to give them baby. Enough for rest of my life.”

Katie’s jaw sagged. What onearthdidtheywant with Dawn?

“And then my phone rings again. This time it is CIA. They offer me money for youandkid. I tell them what FSB offers; they offer to double it.”

What. The. Hell? Katie got that the Americans would be willing to pay for the safety of an American citizen, but double what sounded like a lot of money already? Did Uncle Charlie really have that much clout? Dang.

“I call FSB again,” Natasha said in agitation, a Russian accent thick in her voice, now. “And they offer to match CIA.”

Holy crap. There was a bidding war going on for her and Dawn’s lives?

“And then Alex calls.” Natasha snorted. “His offer I understand. I let you two go, he lets me live.”

That sounded like Alex. And it warmed Katie all the way to the cockles of her soul…whatever the hell cockles were.

“Am I allowed to vote on which offer you accept?” Katie asked dryly.

A crack of laughter escaped the Russian woman. “Now you know why I ask, who in hell are you?”

“I’m a nurse from Pittsburgh. I was offered a job by a humanitarian relief organization to go to remote corners of the world to render medical aid.”

Natasha stared at her skeptically. Katie supposed she would have trouble believing such an answer if she were in the other woman’s shoes.

“You are more than a nurse,” Natasha declared. “Much more.”

“I don’t work for the government. I promise you. Call my employer—Doctors Unlimited. They’ll verify who I am.”

“They can lie.”

“Have them send you a picture of my last pay stub. Or look at the staff pictures posted on their website. Right now. This very second, before anyone can tamper with the site and add me to it.” She rattled off the website URL and Natasha typed it into her cell phone. Katie held her breath in hopes that the woman would believe her.

“That picture of you sucks,” Natasha declared in a few seconds.

Katie smiled in relief. “I told them that, too, but a man runs the D.U. website. He didn’t care.”

Natasha’s cell phone rang, its jangle loud in the cavernous space. Dawn stirred as Natasha put the device to her ear. Her gaze shot to Katie and she snapped something back in terse Russian.

Drat. If only she spoke Russian.

Natasha jammed the phone in her pocket and shouted at the men ranged around the room. They lurched and started into motion, but it was too late. Every window in the place exploded inward in a massive eruption of glass and noise.

23

Alex clutched at the back of his head, which still hurt like a sonofabitch. He’d caught Ian doing the same thing a few times, but neither of them was about to complain about their respective smashing headaches and be the weaker man.

“Any minute, now,” Ian muttered.

The two of them were watching the FBI SWAT team make final preparations to assault the warehouse Katie and Dawn were being held in.

When he’d woken up on the ground with a paramedic crouching over him, his first question had been if the police had I.D.ed the shooters. As soon as he’d heard that several Russian nationals were among the dead, he’dknown.

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