Page 59 of Close Pursuit

Alex sat down in a plastic chair in the waiting area and pretended to read yesterday’s edition of Pravda that he picked up from the coffee table beside him.

Katie walked back and forth with Dawn, who was uncharacteristically fussy all of a sudden. Sensing disquiet in Katie, perhaps? Poor kid’s sleep schedule must be wrecked by all the weird hours they’d been keeping.

Their flight to Moscow was just being called for pre-boarding—which they qualified for, not only because they had a baby but because they needed not to die before they left Uzbekistan—when a commotion broke out at the security area across from their gate.

The Marine escort leapt to his feet with Alex not far behind. Katie rushed to Alex’s side like a child running to a parent for safety.

Man, she was a good actress. Hell, she’d fooled him, hadn’t she?

“What is it?” she asked with credible fear quavering in her soprano voice.

He stared at the group of suited men trying to argue their way through the phalanx of security guards who’d appeared like magic in a thick cluster before the entry point.

Wow. Those Uzbeki soldiers must have been lurking just out of sight the whole time. What had that attaché told them about him, anyway? Hell, he supposed his name alone probably would have been enough to garner that sort of security presence.

“Ohmigod,” Katie breathed.

He glanced down at her and then followed the direction of her incredulous stare through the heavy glass partition. Behind the four suited men arguing stridently with the security guards stood another man, apart and aloof from the commotion. A face he hadn’t seen in years. His own face, but thirty years older.

“You look just like him,” Katie said in wonder and horror.

Roman Koronov.What,in name of all that was unholy, washedoing here?

It was one thing to suspect his father had been in the Chaika. It was another thing to see his father like this. In the flesh. The bogeyman of his nightmares made real and standing only a dozen yards away, scowling.

Cold, sick shock roiled his stomach until Alex felt like vomiting.

“Why’shehere?” Katie asked tightly.

Belatedly, the attaché chick spotted his old man and audibly gasped. To her credit, her hackles stood straight up and she all but growled aloud. That, or she was as good an actress as Katie.

As much for the attaché’s benefit as Katie’s, Alex snarled, “I don’t care if he wants to talk to me or not. Wild horses couldn’t drag me within speaking distance of him.”

He glared coldly as his father slowly, deliberately lifted a cell phone to take a picture. Except he didn’t point the phone at Alex. The bastard pointed it at Katie and Dawn.

“Why is he taking pictures of me?” Katie asked nervously.

“Son of a bitch is trying to intimidate me. He’s sending me a message,” Alex said icily.

“What message?”

Alex pointedly turned his back on his father. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll never play ball with him. I’m done with him.”

“Big words, Mr. Peters,” the Marine muttered.

“That’s Doctor Peters to you,” he snapped. “Put us on the plane. Now. And at all costs, don’t let him through that security checkpoint.”

Attaché chick left the waiting area and headed over to the checkpoint, hopefully to run additional interference with his father, while the Marine hustled him, Katie, and Dawn aboard the jet.

First class seats, huh? Wow. The embassy must really want to get rid of them bad to spring for these expensive seats. Honestly, he’d expected to be crammed in the worst seats on the plane by way of petty revenge for their spectacular arrival at the embassy last night.

Most likely, these had been the only seats available on such short notice. Or, he thought sourly, maybe Uncle Charlie had even more clout than he’d given the guy credit for.

Katie fidgeted beside him. “Will your father try to shoot this plane down?”

It was entirely possible his father had the influence to call in an airstrike on this plane. But last he heard, his father wanted him to work for the FSB, not kill him.

“Even he’s not that vindictive,” he murmured to Katie, flashing her a false smile of reassurance. Not that he believed his own words for a minute.

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