CAST OF CHARACTERS

Carly Jones—After making some serious mistakes in her past, she gets the chance to start over. But with someone gunning for her, will she survive her mission?

Nick Tarasov—Member of the SDDU (Special Designation Defense Unit). His job is to train and supervise Carly and her teammates. He also needs to ignore his attraction to Carly and focus on the mission.

Anita Caballo, Samantha Hanley and Gina Torno—Carly’s teammates. Can they cooperate long enough to bring the mission to success?

Brant Law—The FBI agent working with Nick to put together the team.

Tsernyakov—The illegal weapons trader is among the five most wanted criminals in the world.

Dimitry—A decoy Tsernyakov uses to stand in for him at meetings with prospective clients, so his own face can remain unknown.

Peter Alexeev—A close associate who crossed Tsernyakov, for which his whole family must pay the price.

Salvatore Ettori—A security guard at one of the companies Savall Consulting works with. The question is how far is he prepared to go to follow his boss’s orders.

Paolo Costa—Founder of Costa-Costa, a crooked corporation that engages in money laundering on Grand Cayman. The women’s team is interfering with his business.

Secret Contract
Dana Marton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

With many thanks to Allison Lyons, Cindy Whitesell and Tracy Montoya.

Chapter One

Burge, happy whenever he got to order her around, pushed her through the green metal door at the far end of the cell block but didn’t follow. What did they want with her now? She was on her guard, scanning the people ahead with suspicion—a good basic stance for the incarcerated.

The sharp scent of bleach hit her nose. The room had gotten a scrub down that morning. Thank God, she hadn’t been pulled for that job.

“Miss Jones.” The greeting came from one of three men, outsiders, who stood at the head of the room. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

One of the dozen or so harsh fluorescent lights above flickered as she went straight to the back, picking her way among white plastic chairs and folding tables that were set up classroom style for the elderly volunteer who came in twice a week to give GED classes. Three women waited there already, wearing the same orange jumpsuit that hung on Carly’s figure. Clothes that marked them, set them apart. She would never wear orange again once she got out of here. Like most people in the place, she had a whole list of “never-agains.”

She nodded to Anita and took in the unfamiliar girl next to her. The third woman she knew only by sight and fame. Gina Torno was in for murder and not particularly popular in cell block 3C. Rumor had it, before she’d gone bad, she’d been a cop.

“My name is Brant Law. I work for the FBI,” said the man who’d greeted Carly by name earlier.

Her defenses, already up, threw a few extra dead bolts. The last time she had mingled with the FBI, they’d been storming her apartment. And this guy could have been the agency’s poster boy—black suit, crisp white shirt, a face carved into cold professionalism.

She glanced again at the other women as she squirmed in her seat. Why were they here? Anita flashed a nervous smile. Carly acknowledged it with a small nod. She hadn’t as a rule sought to make friends on the inside—she didn’t belong with these people—but she didn’t mind Anita Caballo. They had shared kitchen duty a couple of times. Anita had entertained the crew with some pretty funny Latina jokes.

“This is David Moretti, who will be providing legal assistance for you.” The FBI guy, Law, introduced the tall dark-haired man on his right.

Moretti allowed a professional smile, his stance relaxed. He wore a suit, but it wasn’t like the FBI agent’s. This one was sharp and expensive, the kind fashion models wore in the magazines people donated to the prison. He was the hottest guy she’d seen in six years, not that he had much competition considering the male guards.

The ruling feeling when she looked at him was mistrust. He was a lawyer. Her own loser lawyer had let her down big time.

“Nick Tarasov will be responsible for your training and safety,” Law said, introducing the most intimidating of the three.

Training for what? She narrowed her eyes as she watched Tarasov. He stood with his legs apart, hands behind his back, commando style. He wore a black T-shirt, black cargo pants, combat boots and an expression that made her want to leave the room before things got unpleasant. His stance, the hard look on his face and his unblinking eyes transmitted but one message—this one could be scary if he wanted to be.

None of the men said, “My pleasure,” or “Good to meet you,” as they were introduced. Jerks. Government men. To her, the two meant one and the same.

They hadn’t broken her yet. They sure weren’t going to do so now. She straightened her back and her chin came up a notch.

Law picked up a yellow folder from the desk and opened it. “Anita Caballo, embezzlement. Samantha Hanley, grand theft auto. Carly Jones, hacker. Gina Maria Torno, manslaughter.” He looked up and at each of them in turn. “This is your lucky day.”

Carly caught the young woman who had to be Samantha mouthing a four-letter word. Anita folded her hands in front of her. Gina’s face pretty much reflected Carly’s feelings: mistrust and skepticism. The first thing you learned in federal prison was not to believe in luck. If they had any luck at all, none of them would have been here in the first place.

“You were brought together based on your unique skills to form a team to perform a specific task. Miss Caballo’s financial expertise, Miss Hanley’s knowledge of various vehicles and locks, Miss Jones’s experience with network security and Miss Torno’s proficiency with weapons make you uniquely qualified for a very important mission.”

“And that would be?” Gina cut in and gave the men an insolent glare. She was compact and tough as nails, with a short bob of mahogany hair and sharp brown eyes.

Who cares? Carly thought. She was doing no favors for the government. Forget it. Not after the bastards had locked her up and taken away any chance she’d ever had for a decent future. Justice had never entered her trial. It had been all about politicians wanting to show results to nudge up their approval ratings, using her high-profile case to score.

Law was watching Gina. “I’m not at liberty to discuss anything at this stage. I will not be able to give you any particulars until you agree to participate.”

That gave Carly pause.

But Gina was shooting back already. “What’s in it for us?”

“If you succeed, the rest of your sentence will be suspended and your records cleared.”

The four women sucked in air as one.

Carly swallowed a sudden rush of hope. Freedom. How many times had she daydreamed about that, thinking whatever she had to do, she would do it to get to the other side of these walls?

But not this. Not becoming the government’s lackey.

“And if we don’t succeed?” She found her voice. Regardless of whether she would even consider the offer on the table or not, she wanted to know all the tangents.

Law held her gaze. “At least you get out for a few weeks. And your willingness to cooperate would be taken into consideration at future appeals and parole hearings. The deal stands only if you all agree. If one person is out, it’s off the table for everyone.”

If they thought they could blackmail her with the others, get to work on her guilty conscience, they had another think coming. She barely knew these women. What did she care?

But the thought immediate freedom had got lodged in her brain, the possibility stinging her eyes. She was twenty-nine with four more years left of her sentence. She hadn’t expected to get a chance to walk down a street until she was thirty-three.

“Do you have any questions?” The Italian-looking guy, the lawyer, what was his name? David Moretti. He stepped forward, all smooth and sinuous. His gaze hesitated on Samantha for a second or two.

Maybe he was having second thoughts as to whether that one could handle whatever the men had in mind. She looked at least a half-dozen years younger than Carly was, insolent stamped all over her, noncooperative there in the sneering set of her lips and her I-dare-you eyes.

“Can I ask if you’re going to put the offer in writing? Do we get a chance to read it over?” Anita spoke up.

Moretti shook his head. “Due to the confidential nature of the mission, for your own safety, as little as possible will be documented.”

That jolted her. Not that they wouldn’t write the offer down, but the way it made this “mission” sound—dangerous. Then a rapid succession of revelations made her go still.

She would get out, let free by the government. The deal would not be documented. She wouldn’t have to sign papers to pledge anything. Whatever they asked of her had to be something clandestine, something they didn’t want anyone to know about. So if she disappeared during this mission, what could they do?

Absolutely nothing.

Most likely, if she was reading this right, they couldn’t even admit that she’d been working for them.

A new life, someplace far, far away where her record couldn’t follow her. She could do some software developing, consult under another name. A normal life in the States was out of the question, no matter what. Even if she took the mission and they succeeded, even if her record was cleared, her case had been high profile enough, all over the media. Nobody would give her a second chance. She’d be flipping burgers at a fast-food joint for the rest of her life, at best. She should risk her life for that?

“So how long do we have to think about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?” Gina scoffed at the men.

Law glanced at his watch. “How about fifteen minutes? We’ll let you discuss in private. Call out if you have any questions.” He moved toward the door, the other two behind him.

“Is this a military mission, spying, assassination?” Gina kept at it. “Can you give us a clue?”

Law stopped and looked back. “Not at this stage, no.”

Tarasov half turned as he stepped out, and Carly could swear he was looking right at her. Man, he was as serious as a life sentence.

Gina flashed a rude gesture when the door banged closed behind the men.

Carly couldn’t agree more.

“Got a load of that?” Samantha was still staring after them.

“They’d let us out,” Carly said. Her brain seemed to be stuck on that thought, bringing up the list she kept in her diary—things she wanted to do once she was free, the big-ticket items like starting a whole new life and the small everyday stuff she missed. She pictured walking into a computer megastore and spending the day there. She wanted to go to a restaurant and choose her food—steak and a knife sharp enough to cut it. She wanted to dance with a man, to be kissed until the memory of the last six miserable years floated away. She didn’t want to not have sex again until she was thirty-three.

She could get out. Now. It didn’t have to be about letting the government use her. She could use them.

“What do we have to lose?” she asked, the small measure of initial hope swelling, filling her to the brim, mixing with the excitement of facing a challenge.

“Have you ever seen that movie The Dirty Dozen?” Gina pinned her with a hard glare.

When she looked at you—really looked at you—it wasn’t that hard to believe that she’d knocked someone off.

Carly shook her head. From the way Samantha pulled up a black eyebrow, she figured the girl hadn’t seen it either. Anita stared at her lap and didn’t seem to be listening.

“During World War II, twelve convicted killers are given a chance to get out of prison. They are dropped behind enemy lines to fight the Nazis,” Gina said.

“So?” Samantha shrugged. She was the youngest among them, with the whole gothic thing going—not an easy feat to pull off in an orange jumpsuit. Her short hair was died black and formed into stiff spikes, plenty of holes in her skin above her eyebrows, in her nose and in her ears where her earrings used to be.

Gina turned toward her slowly. “Two words for you—suicide mission.”

A few moments of silence passed.

Anita took a deep breath and looked at them, gave them a tight, apologetic smile. “I get out next month. On parole.”

Carly stared. The woman hadn’t mentioned that in the kitchen.

“Meaning you’re out?” Gina was tapping her rubber-soled slipper against the leg of the chair in front of her.

“I’m sorry. I mean, what if you’re right and this is really dangerous?” To her credit, if she felt intimidated by Gina, like Carly was, she didn’t show it.

“What do you think we’ll have to do?” Carly asked, thinking, How closely would we be watched while we were doing it?

“Whatever it is, they wanted me because I know guns,” Gina said. “The commando guy looked like serious business.”

Right. The way Nick Tarasov had stood there— hair in a severe military cut, his bluish-gray eyes sharply focused—he looked as cold and hard as the floor-to-ceiling metal bars at the end of the cell block. Seemed about as unmovable, too. He hadn’t said a single word the whole time.

“They want us because we know about guns, money, computers and breaking and entering.” Gina looked at them. “My guess is some kind of spying.”

“Don’t they have trained spies? Like people who do that kind of stuff for a living?” Carly asked, but a little thrill ran through her. Her only solace for the past couple of years had been watching Alias in the rec room. What would it feel like to be part of something like that?

“We’re disposable.” Samantha shrugged.

The carelessly offered comment gave them all something to think about.

Anita stood to walk around the other women, her movements too graceful to be called pacing. Her black braid that reached to her waist swung a little with each long step. She carried herself like a competitive dancer. “Mission Impossible.”

Was she considering it? Carly watched her. Why on earth would she?

“More like Charlie’s freakin’ Angels,” Samantha said deadpan and rubbed her left earlobe that had more holes than beta-version software did. “I’m in. But don’t expect me to start flipping my hair and wearing a bikini.”

Carly ran her teeth over her lower lip. The thought of staying in prison for another four long years seemed intolerable now that the possibility of freedom had been waved in front of her. Whatever she had to face, it couldn’t be worse than this, the slow wasting of her life day after day, month after month. She could swear she felt brain cells pop one by one as they died from atrophy. She craved challenge. Outsmarting the government would definitely provide one. She would go along with their game while she figured out how to get away from them. No way would anyone ever bring her back here.

“I want to do it,” she said.

Gina stopped tapping and drew air in through her nose. “What the hell.”

Anita sat down and folded her hands in her lap. She said nothing as the women all watched her.

Disappointment squeezed Carly’s throat, but she understood where Anita stood. If she had only a few weeks to go, she wouldn’t be jumping off a cliff blindfolded either.

“They would erase our records. He definitely said that, right?” Anita swallowed.

Gina nodded.

“Yes,” Carly said. Did she sound too eager, too desperate?

“We could get hurt. Or die. We have no idea what this is about. I don’t like the way they made it sound. Whatever they want from us might be worse than being in here.” Anita stood again.

What could be worse than four more years locked in a cell? Carly clenched her teeth. Anita wasn’t going for it. She tried to shrug off the disappointment, but couldn’t. Amazing how much hope a person could build up in five minutes.

Nobody ever got an offer like this. Nobody would even believe it, not that they would ever be able to tell anyone. Freedom, she breathed in the idea one last time, letting it fill her lungs. A nice fantasy while it had lasted.

But Anita said, “We might all regret this,” as she drew her spine straight. “Okay.”

Okay?

Startled confusion came first, then the puzzle solver in Carly’s mind zeroed in on the softly spoken decision. Why?

“Aren’t you full of surprises?” Gina said.

“I have my own reasons.” Anita squared her slim shoulders.

Carly waited for further explanation, but none was forthcoming. Anita wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes.

So she had secrets.

Carly took in the others. They probably all did. And they had all agreed.

Oh, God. They were doing it!

Maybe she should have been scared, but at this moment, excitement trumped everything. She felt her face split into a grin. Free. She let her eyes drift closed. She had a lot to catch up with.

“We’re getting out.” Her head spinning with possibilities, she looked again at the others.

That cooled her a little.

Gina’s face was grim, the set of her mouth determined. Anita stared straight ahead. Samantha had the same what-do-I-care? expression she’d stuck to throughout, but Carly thought she could see a trace of uncertainty and fear in her eyes. None of them said a word for a couple of seconds.

“It’s a chance to start over,” she told them, but some of her excitement was fading as bits and pieces of conversation floated back from the past twenty minutes, fully registering at last. Suicide mission and we’re disposable were definite buzz killers. She wouldn’t let things go that far. She would find a way to skip before the mission got out of hand.

She’d done more time, as it was, than any other hacker before or since her. And she had done no harm. She hadn’t been interested in any data, hadn’t stolen or damaged anything. She’d just looked at code, wanting to learn, searching for shortcuts, unique fixes and unusual solutions. She had paid for them dearly.

“Hey, we could have our own secret club. The Second Chance Chicks.” Samantha’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Or The Dirty Four. Maybe we’ll be in a movie someday.”

They’d never make a team. They were too different. Carly certainly was. She’d given up a long time ago on fitting in anywhere. And with this group, she didn’t want to fit.

Gina “the killer” Torno was giving Sam a dark look. “Don’t get too excited, kid. If they’ll ever make a movie about us, they’ll be calling it The Doomed and the Desperate.”

Not her, Carly thought, as she began to plan.

TSERNYAKOV CLOSED THE FOLDER on his computer and glanced out his office window that overlooked the factory yard, breathed in the sweet-musty smell of sugar beets being processed. Some people didn’t care for the permeating odor, much like broccoli cooking, but for him, it was the scent of his childhood.

Peter was late. Had he run? If he had, he would be found.

He glanced at the display of his phone when it rang, smiled at the familiar number and took the call. “How are you, Mother? What did the doctor say?”

“I was just thinking about you. What a good, good son you are. I’ll have to have more tests. I can just go in, no need to stay at the hospital.”

“Are you sure you want to stay here? I could have someone take you to Switzerland. They have better facilities.”

“This is where my strength is, in my country and in you. What would I do in Switzerland? I couldn’t even talk to anyone,” she said, then added, “You will visit soon?”

“In a few days. You have need of anything?”

“What could I want? My successful son spoils me.”

“You deserve it, Mamuska.”

She made a small sound. “I almost forgot, I ran into your aunt Irina at the hospital this morning.”

“Is she ill?”

“She was visiting her neighbor, you know the one who used to repair bicycles? He broke a hip. Irina walked with me for a while. Her cousin, Anna, invited her to England and she’s thinking about going. You remember Anna’s boy, Calvin? He is a big businessman over there. Not as successful as you, but he’s made something of himself. He’s in trouble now, that’s why Irina mentioned him. The government is trying to get his money. They’re accusing him of something crazy, they say he traded inside. What does that even mean?”

His mother went on for a while, lamenting the misfortune that had befallen Anna’s family.

Insider trading. Tsernyakov understood the charge well, as he understood why Irina had told his mother, why Anna had told Irina. They all hoped that he would fix it.

“Maybe with your shops in England, I thought you might know someone,” his mother finally said.

“I’ll see, Mamuska.”

“I knew you would. I told Irina not to worry, that son of mine can fix anything anywhere.”

He promised a visit soon, said goodbye and hung up. Then he ran an Internet search on Spencer Holdings and Cal Spencer, a cousin so distant he’d only seen him once, when he’d been ten and Cal a newborn, visiting Russia with his parents to be baptized there.

Looked like Cal had made something of himself. Seemed he’d been amassing a fortune in real estate. And, most interestingly, he was getting into warehousing. A handful of strategically placed warehouses throughout England. Maybe they could be mutually beneficial to each other.

He sent off an e-mail and asked for a full background check on Cal from his trusted source. He never did business with anyone he hadn’t thoroughly investigated, family or otherwise.

“Come in,” he answered to a knock on the door.

Ivan, one of his secretaries, stopped on the threshold. “The School Board has contacted us to see if you would agree to deliver the requested amount of sugar, sir.”

He clenched his jaw. “When I do, I’ll let them know.” They insulted him with their impatience.

“I’m sorry, sir.” The man bowed his head. “They insist that it is urgent.”

What were they going to do? Go to another source? No one could get what they wanted, in the amount they wanted. He wasn’t even sure if it was possible. If it was, he was the man to make it happen, and they knew it.

The money they offered was substantial, but he wasn’t prepared to deal with them until he was one hundred percent sure that this wasn’t some kind of a trap. “The School Board” was the code name of a zealous new terrorist organization that specialized in training camps. They had ambitious intentions but barely a record. “Sugar” was code name for anything Tsernyakov sold these days, a necessary precaution in a world where surveillance had become an art form. No one had ever got anything on him, and he was determined to keep things that way.

“They’ll get my answer when I’m ready.”

A car pulled up outside and he looked at the familiar white SUV, then at Peter as the man got out. The passenger side door opened and his wife Sonya stepped to the gravel.

“Thank you, sir.” Ivan left and closed the door behind him.

His cell phone rang, and Tsernyakov picked it up as he watched Alexandra jump from the back. Peter’s daughter was a beauty at twenty. How fast time flew. He could remember her as a little girl, riding on his knee.

“He’s here, sir.”

“I can see,” he snapped into the phone. Peter had brought his family with him. Perhaps he’d thought he would not be punished then, that he could use them as a shield. He’d thought wrong. “Take them to the factory.”

“Yes, sir.”

He watched as his men pointed toward the back building and Peter balked, the women going forward without a second thought. Thousands of tons of sugar beets stood stacked by the conveyer belt that took them up to be cleaned then chopped to a juicy mush. Right now, they looked like small muddy balls. When he’d been a kid, he and his friends had sometimes played soccer with them in the back.

Once he had found two human heads as he’d picked through the piles to find a beet that was rounder than the rest. The heads hadn’t looked much different from the beets, all caked with mud as they’d come up the conveyor belt eventually. His father had been an enforcer for the man who’d owned the factory at the time. Tsernyakov had grown up understanding the business.

A good education was paramount to a man’s success. He believed in that. That was why his children, when they were grown, would attend the best universities of the west.

He glanced at his calendar and considered his schedule, the machines’ incessant rumble providing a soothing background noise. The chopper was a fearsome piece of equipment that could grind anything to pulp in minutes.

Peter shouldn’t have done business with Yokoff.

Tsernyakov rubbed the bridge of his nose. He believed in Old Testament-style revenge. When someone betrayed you, you didn’t just kill him, you killed his family, his animals then burned his fields.

He wanted his enemies to be crystal clear on this—nobody went against him and lived.

Chapter Two

Her mother was there, visiting.

“I’m sorry, honey.” She wore her Easter hat. Seemed odd for September. Must have cut her hair short again—she did that from time to time on a whim—not a single chestnut curl showed.

She was as slim as ever but her face had aged. Too much so, Carly thought. How long had it been since they’d seen each other?

“It’s okay,” she told her. “I’m sorry, too.” I missed you. She didn’t say that or, Where have you been?

“Visitation over. All inmates, please line up for exit inspection,” the overhead loudspeaker demanded.

No. Not yet. She grabbed the edge of the table. She still had so much to say and no words to say it. She wasn’t good with words. Did her mother understand that?

“Bomb in building! Sixty seconds to explosion!” A real person yelled that, not the loudspeaker this time.

She turned back to the guards who watched over the visiting room, but they were disappearing into the darkness.

The next second she was pulled awake, in the middle of the night, in her cell, alone. Her mother had been gone for years, lost to cancer, was the realization the first split second brought. But the emotions that came with the thought were abruptly interrupted when the door slammed open and banged against the wall.

Her brain, heavy with sleep, struggled to catch up, her muscles tense from the unholy noise. She could barely make out the silhouette of the man advancing on her. She pulled her neck in on reflex, brought her hands up.

“Get out! Get out! Sixty seconds to explosion!”

This time, she finally comprehended the words and lunged away from the bed, heart racing, blood rushing. Get out! Get out! The order screamed in her brain now, her body propelled forward by stark terror.

The man stepped in front of her before she could reach the door. He shoved her back.

“Let me go!” She pushed forward and thrust her arm out to slap him aside.

He didn’t budge.

“Why are you doing this?” Who was it? Burge? He had hated her from the get-go. Didn’t he realize that if they didn’t get moving they were both going to die?

She kicked and went for his face with a fist at the same time. To hell with him. To hell with what she was going to get for attacking a guard. Somehow she squeezed past him and ran down the hall, realized a few steps out that it wasn’t the hall outside her cell. Where was she? Why weren’t the emergency lights on?

She could still be dreaming, she thought and slowed, then the man gripped her shoulder to pull her back—definitely real. She turned back to fight.

“Stop it, Burge! What are you doing?”

He said nothing, but slammed her against the wall and blocked her way. He was holding something in his left hand, his fist closed around a small object she couldn’t make out. A hand grenade? Was he crazy?

She ducked under his arm, kicked sideways at his knee then ran for all she was worth, fully awake now, the memory of where she was coming back to her. She turned right at the end of the hall, boots falling heavily on the tile floor somewhere close.

She slammed through the door to the staircase and leaped her way down. Then she was at the exit, throwing her body against the metal door, tumbling out into the wet night and away from the building. The man was right behind her.

She could see his face now in the light of the lamp-posts and stopped running, braced her hands on her knees as she gasped for air. She cursed the man who stood before her wearing a black T-shirt with black cargo pants, and an even blacker scowl on his face.

“Sixty-one seconds.” Stopwatch in hand, Nick Tarasov stepped forward until his combat boots were toe-to-toe with her bare feet. “You’re dead.” His voice dripped with contempt, his gaze as hard as the steel door she’d slammed her shoulder into moments ago.

Screw you. Her heart still beat like crazy. She was shaking inside, but she straightened and looked him in the eyes without reaching up to massage her aching shoulder. She didn’t want him to know how badly he’d messed her up.

A slow rain drizzled on her head, her body wishing for the warmth of her blankets. “If you’ve had your fun, can I go back to bed?”

He leaned forward, until he was in her face, his expression hard. “Night training,” he said, then shouted at the top of his lungs, “Obstacle course. Get moving, soldier!”

Now? The course was nothing but a mud hole. “I don’t have my shoes on.”

He nodded toward the sidewalk by the building. Her boots and socks lay scattered on the concrete. He must have tossed them out the window after he’d chased her from her room. “Move! Move! Move!”

She collected and yanked on her footwear then turned toward the track and the obstacle course behind it, got going on the double, running on the slippery grass.

“Faster.” Nick passed her and turned around, jogging backward with ease.

Drop dead. She pushed harder.

Why had she ever thought that it was some awesome good luck being the first of the women to be let out? David Moretti had advised her lawyer to appeal her case. The appeal had been speedily accepted. Anita was left to serve out her sentence. She was expected here, at the FBI’s training course at Quantico, Virginia, tomorrow. Gina and Sam were getting out on parole next week within days of each other.

Carly had gotten out two weeks before anyone else. It hadn’t turned out to be two weeks of freedom. She was locked up at Quantico as tightly as she’d been locked up in prison. And each day, Nick Tarasov, the cold bastard, did his level best to kill her.

She tripped but caught herself, ran on.

“Let’s just focus on the first step and make sure that’s executed to the best of our abilities,” he said. That seemed to have become his mantra since she’d gotten here. Was he under the illusion that he was teaching her life skills as well as pushups?

The first obstacle course began with the old tire trap. She stepped into the first and moved forward, lifting her feet high as she ran across the tires, squishing into the mud in the middle.

“Again. Faster,” Tarasov yelled when she reached the end. He did the exercise himself, as he had done everything he expected her to do, always, from the very beginning.

She ran back to the start, her mud-crusted boots adding extra pounds. Her muscles were stiff, still aching from their work the day before.

“Again. Faster!” He was right behind her.

That much yelling couldn’t be good for a person. His blood pressure was bound to go up. Maybe he would have a stroke. There was a thought. She pressed her hand to her side and tried to hide that she was already starting to gasp for air.

He made her run the tires a half-dozen times before he let her move on to the rope. She lunged and caught on with her hands, but her muddy boots were too slippery to find purchase.

She needed long pants. The wet rope scratched her thighs where the shorts she had used in lieu of pajamas left her skin bare—a place she would just as soon not bring to his attention.

He was watching her closely. “Don’t use your feet. Use your arms. Go!”

She glared at him but put one hand over the other, made some progress, wiped her forehead on the rope when sweat rolled into her eyes. She’d worked out in prison. It had been something to do in solitude, passing the time. She’d been in far better shape when she’d gotten out than when she’d gone in. Decent shape, she’d thought. It had taken Tarasov less than half a day to prove otherwise.

“Another ten feet and you’re there,” he called up to her.

Might as well be a hundred. It seemed impossible that her arms would support her that long. She was still tired from her training the day before. She’d had two, maybe three hours of sleep. She had nothing left to give.

In her brief moments of rest, she’d been considering finding a way to break out of the compound, but each time she had pushed the impulse aside. Patience. Training wouldn’t last forever. Getting away would be much easier once she was out of here, in a normal, civilian environment. And whatever she learned in the meanwhile would aid her in escape and evasion later on.

She glanced at the man standing at the bottom of the rope. What would it take to get by Tarasov?

He grabbed the rope next to hers, went up, paused for a second at the top, then effortlessly eased himself down.

He was a damn machine. He was never tired, hungry or upset. If necessary, he’d show her the same self-defense move twenty times in a row.

Getting away from him might prove harder than she had thought—he was even tougher than he looked.

She had always been a sucker for a good challenge.

She looked up, fixed her gaze on the steel bar above and moved forward. Eight more feet to go. Six. Three. By the time she finally touched the cold metal, her arms were shaking.

Now the way down. She lowered herself slowly, one handhold at a time. She was about halfway when she slipped. Still, she caught herself, tried to grab with her slippery boots onto the wet rope, but that didn’t work. She slipped again, this time for good, the rope burning across her palm. She let go in response to the sudden, sharp pain.

She was falling, falling free, bracing for impact.

Then she was caught in Nick Tarasov’s arms. The landing was soft—compared to the hard slam into the ground she had expected, but still it stole her breath for a second or two. She looked up at him wide-eyed, waiting for him to yell.

He swayed for a moment then steadied, and set her on her feet. His light brown hair looked blond in the moonlight. His brush cut hadn’t grown a millimeter since she’d first met him at the prison. He must have found time in between her torture sessions to get away for a cut. Everything about him screamed “commando.” He was raw power and confidence wrapped in black.

“Let me see your hand,” he said, his voice gruff. He was removing a small flashlight from his belt.

“First-aid station?” There was one on the ground floor of one of the buildings. Thank God, she was done for the night.

One eyebrow slid up his forehead. “There is no first-aid station. You’re in the woods. Your team has been taken out.” His voice was cold, matter-of-fact. “A dozen of the enemy are coming up about a hundred yards behind you with machine guns. What do you do?”

Was he for real?

Looked like she had hesitated for too long, because he reached for the hem of the FBI T-shirt she’d slept in and ripped it a few inches up, then around.

“Don’t—” By the time she pulled back, wishing she’d slept in her bra, he was done, leaving her midriff bare. The night air felt cold against the sheen of sweat on her back.

He ripped the ribbon of material in half. “Bandages. You have to learn to think on your feet. Come on, up the wall.”

The plastic “rocks” screwed into the boards were as slippery as the rope had been under her muddy boots. He was coming up behind her, but didn’t pass her this time. Maybe he was hanging out to catch her again if she fell. She gritted her teeth and refused to slip. Her shirt was damp with sweat by the time she made it all the way up and straddled the top.

He sat next to her—wasn’t even breathing hard. “That was good. You’re getting the hang of how to distribute your weight when you reach.”

She’d followed the instructions he’d given her last time. A miracle that she’d remembered under the circumstances.

He was a first-rate hard-ass, a government man, so she disliked him on principle—a sentiment common in the hacker community—but he was a hell of a trainer. She admired skill and knowledge in any form. This guy had it in spades. The bad news was most of the time she hated his guts. The good news was she was getting stronger and better every day.

Thunder clapped overhead.

She looked up, then at him. “Did you know men are six times more likely to be struck by lightning than women?”

One eyebrow slid up his forehead. She could have sworn his upper lip twitched. “Hop into your harness. Down we go,” he said and pulled on a rope that hung down the wall on the other side, putting some muscles into play.

He wasn’t hard to look at. If she had to seduce him to get away from him…She had promised herself to do absolutely anything.

Deep breath.

Maybe not that.

After years of abstinence, the thought of seducing anyone should have felt a lot more exciting. But Tarasov—She would find another path to freedom. The thought of cozying up to the man left her feeling jumpy. He was a live wire. Her sense of self-preservation said to stay away from him.

He probably wasn’t as hot as she was beginning to think, anyway. Most likely, it was a case of even stale bread looking tasty to a starving woman.

It ticked her off that she would find him attractive even while thoroughly disliking him. Wasn’t that abnormal? Weren’t women supposed to be attracted to men to whom they felt an emotional connection? Men were supposed to be the ones who jumped at hormones and visuals.

There wasn’t a micron of a connection between the two of them, that was for sure. They were as different as two people could be. She was a loner, a hacker—antiregulation and therefore antigovernment by definition, one hundred percent intellectual. He was on some kind of commando team, a soldier who jumped to decisions made by politicians, a breed that hadn’t got a single thing right since the Declaration of Independence, and he was a muscle man through and through.

She clipped on her harness and stepped away from the wall. Her thigh muscles were trembling, but she held steady, envying Nick’s graceful ease. A flick of her thumb released the catch, allowing her to slide fast enough to catch up with him halfway down. He hadn’t been going full speed.

They finished the rest side by side, unhooked the harnesses and let them drop. Sometimes, when they worked in sync like this, it almost felt as if she were catching up to him in skill. Then he would pull ahead and leave her in the dust—mud tonight—and she would realize how wide the gap between them really was.

“Why pick me for this mission? Everything I know about information-technology security is outdated.” She spit out the question she’d fallen asleep thinking about.

He stopped to look at her. “It wasn’t factual knowledge we were after, it was a way of thinking. You’re good both at logic and creative problem solving. You have outstanding intuition when it comes to complex systems. As far as what you’ve missed—” He shrugged. “You’re a quick learner. It won’t take you long to get up to speed.”

The compliments—although, he probably meant them as simple evaluation—felt nice. And they wanted her to get up to speed, which implied longterm access to computers and the Internet and free time to spend on them. She was out of prison, years early, and what they were asking in exchange was the one thing that had been on top of her do-once-I’m-out list. Visions of computer code danced before her eyes.

“Barbed-wire crawl.” He moved toward the next obstacle. “Let’s go. On the double.”

She recited a colorful string of swear words under her breath—stuff she’d learned in the can—as she followed.

The sun wasn’t exactly breaching the horizon, but the sky was beginning to lighten. He looked like a life-sized action figure in the odd light. His body was hard, carved with muscles, his biceps stretching the black T-shirt that seemed to be part of his uniform. He wasn’t tall, five foot ten maybe, just an inch or so taller than Carly, but you wouldn’t notice until you were right up close. His intense presence and attitude made him seem larger than life.

She dropped to the ground when they reached the barbed-wire grid and crawled through the mud on her stomach, made it without losing any skin off her back. They moved on to the next obstacle, Jacob’s ladder—two poles reaching to the sky with boards between them, which she had to climb, the trick being that the distance between the boards grew the higher up you went, until the last one was wider than anyone could reach so you had to jump to get a hold of it. She gripped the wood with the tips of her fingers, pulled herself up, went over then started her descent.

The inverted platforms came next, an exercise where they had to help each other up a structure that looked similar to an upside down pyramid—square platforms in increasing sizes on top of each other, the gap farther and farther once again. It was an obstacle that couldn’t be conquered alone except for the first level or two. When she reached the critical point, Nick was there, with his hands on her waist to push her up. Then it was her turn to pull him to the next level. As lean as he looked, the man was damned heavy.

By the time they got to the rope bridge, she was beginning to have serious doubts about whether or not she would be able to complete the course tonight. She’d worked too hard the day before, and the day before that. Each day since she’d arrived at Quantico, he’d pushed her to the limit. This time, he was pushing her beyond. Didn’t he understand that her body needed time to recover? She was unsteady with exhaustion, every part aching, pain pulsating through her muscles in protest.

He walked a few feet in front of her, the coarse ropes swaying under them.

“Wait—” Her feet slipped and she reached out on instinct, her fist closing around the back of his shirt instead of the rope that served for railing.

He turned to catch her, but she was flailing with her other arm and shifting her weight too rapidly. The rope bridge swung wide. She fell forward, onto him, bringing down the both of them.

He was splayed on the bottom, as hard as a prison mattress. She lay on top of him, dueling instincts warring inside her, one pushing for her to get up and away, the other to hang on until the bridge stopped swaying.

When he shifted, she was startled by the sudden, sharp awareness that ran along the length of her.

“If you ever find yourself on a rope bridge, trying to bring down an enemy, remember this move,” he said, deadpan.

He was probably laughing his butt off at what a klutz she was. She hoped he couldn’t see her cheeks burning and if he did, he didn’t realize the reaction wasn’t purely the effect of acute embarrassment.

They’d been body-to-body pressed together during self-defense training, but this was different. On the mat, she was too focused on figuring what his next move would be, anticipating the pain when he flipped her and slammed her to the ground. He had told her she had to learn how to fall, how to roll, how to come up and fight even if she was hurt.

This time, as he waited for her to get her bearings and stand up, her focus switched too easily from the exercise to the hard body beneath her. Oh, God. She shouldn’t be noticing him like that. She pushed away and scrambled off him, scooting across the bridge as if she were chased by a full platoon with machine guns.

By the time she made it through the entire obstacle course, the rain had stopped and the sun had cleared the horizon. She dropped where she was, breathing hard and staring at the sky, not caring what he thought.

He stood over her with a shuttered expression. “When you recover, I have a surprise for you.”

“As soon as I can get up, I’m going to bed.”

She was so tired, death would have been a relief. Then slowly, another sensation came seeping up through the fatigue. She was feeling kind of…pumped, she realized. She’d done it. Even in the wet night with no sleep, she’d conquered the course. As much as she dreaded the pain and exhaustion of her training each day, a part of her reveled in the challenge of it all, in pushing herself to the limit and discovering new reserves. She found unexpected joy in conquering physical obstacles and she liked the feeling of satisfaction that came with that.

In prison, all they had wanted of her was to keep quiet and out of trouble. But once again, after a long, long time, something was expected of her. That part felt pretty good, actually.

“Ever wonder where the computer labs are?” he asked.

He got her attention. She sat up, hating how effortlessly he was reeling her in. “Am I going to be allowed to go near a PC finally?”

Her stomach growled over the last words. Ever since she’d gotten here, she’d been eating like a pig. She didn’t even want to think about the number of calories she had consumed in doughnuts alone. It was a testament to the grueling training that she hadn’t gained an ounce.

“After target practice.”

“You’re kidding.” After the training she’d just had?

“Seven a.m. every day. The schedule didn’t change. Two straight clips into the bull’s-eye and the PC lab is yours. I’ll make sure your ID is authorized for 24/7 access.”

“Wow, a major vote of trust,” she said with a dose of sarcasm. About time. Up until now, she could only get into buildings, even the dorms where she slept, if he was with her and let her in. And she desperately needed to spend some time with a computer. Alone.

“Deal?” he was asking.

She was half regretting the first deal she’d made with him, with Law and Moretti. Agreeing to their mission hadn’t bought her freedom. She was still locked up, still couldn’t do what she wanted. All she’d accomplished had been trading the prison guards for Tarasov. For the most part, that didn’t feel like much of an improvement.

“I can do it,” she warned him and was surprised when it hit her that she meant it. So far, target practice was turning out to be something she was naturally good at. Looked like all those video games she’d played in her younger years left her with pretty good hand-eye coordination.

The past two weeks had been slowly building up the self-confidence that had eroded to nothing in prison. She had conquered whatever he’d thrown her way. And Nick Tarasov didn’t pull his punches.

He held her gaze. “I never had a doubt.”

“What time is it now?”

“Six-thirty,” he said without glancing at his wristwatch.

She knew him well enough by now to know that pleading or arguing with him would change nothing. She gave him a loathing look and dragged herself to standing, then off into the direction of her room for a five-minute shower and clean clothes, cursing Nick Tarasov all the way.

Four FBI trainees, all men, were starting their dawn run on the track, coming toward her. They all wore the agency logo T-shirt, and had the same haircut.

She looked them over and tried to be objective. Okay, so even in comparison to other fab examples of the male of the species, Nick looked pretty fine. In a lion-safari kind of way—a thrill to look at as long as you stayed in the safety of your vehicle.

She glanced back at him and realized he’d caught her watching the men. He had an amused smirk on his face.

He probably thought she was lusting after those guys. Not that it would have been any of his business if she did. She was an adult. Lust was a valid emotion.

She looked away and tried to picture the kind of woman he would go out with. The song “Bikini Girls with Machine Guns” came to mind.

TSERNYAKOV SCROLLED THROUGH the new e-mail messages on his cell phone as the helicopter banked to the left, circling the Moscow high-rise in front of them in preparation for landing.

The background check on Cal was in, a monster attachment. That would have to wait until he had his laptop from the bag in the back. If it all checked out, he could tell Mamuska to put Anna at ease. He would help her son. He glanced out the window at the people who were waiting for him by the chopper pad, all trusted men.

“Ready for landing, sir?” The pilot asked for his final decision.

Tsernyakov paused. Everything looked okay, which didn’t amount to anything. Everything felt okay, and that was important. He trusted his instincts, so he nodded to the man to authorize landing.

He traveled often and changed direction without warning, scheduled as many as a dozen meetings at the same time, deciding only at the last second which one he was going to attend. If his instincts prickled, he pulled out without hesitation.

The chopper touched down, and he was jumping to the roof the next minute, heading for the elevator entry under heavy guard. His office, one of many, was on the forty-second floor, on the top, overlooking the city. He passed by it and headed straight to the boardroom.

Dmitry waited outside, wearing an expensive suit and a Rolex, his tie pin glinting with a good-sized diamond in it. By the looks of him, he could have been the president of a small republic. Joseph waited with him. The same age and height as Tsernyakov, Joseph was dressed without flair but with precision in a suit that had gone out of style years before, cheap glasses, stack of papers in hand, giving the impression of a lesser clerk or secretary, the same unassuming look that Tsernyakov strove to project.

“Zdrastvuite,” they greeted him and inclined their heads.

His cell phone rang and after glancing at the displayed number, he took the call, listened to the man on the other side of the line. When he hung up, he dialed his broker, sold his stocks in a certain foreign-owned mine in Africa, bought double the stock in another.

“Let’s go,” he said when he was finished, then opened the door to let Dmitry go in first, then Joseph.

“I’m glad we could meet in person.” Dmitry walked to the leader of the group who waited inside and shook hands with a smile, greeted the others before sitting down. There were no introductions. No one offered their names.

The visitors wore ill-fitted suits, the businessman image they sought to project further impeded by their long, scraggly beards that looked out of place in the boardroom. A bunch of fanatics trying to look presentable for the sake of the deal. Who did they think they were fooling?

Joseph and Tsernyakov welcomed the men respectfully, Joseph sitting farther down at the table and putting his papers and pen in front of him, ready to take notes if asked. Tsernyakov went to the server and prepared the refreshments.

“Are you able to deliver the goods we need in the requested volume?” The director of the School Board addressed his question to Dmitry.

A more polite man would have complimented the impressive office building, waited for the tea and coffee being offered before jumping into business.

“The order is unusual in its size,” Dmitry said with a winning smile. “Would you be acquiring it for resale?”

“For personal use,” the director said, taking Dmitry’s measure. He paid no attention to those he considered lesser men.

Tsernyakov brought a tray of tea and offered it around, set the sugar bowl and plate of sliced lemons where everyone could reach them, then went back for coffee. He’d wanted to see the man in person. The School Board and its director had checked out okay. But it was too big a deal, perhaps bigger than anything he’d ever done before, to agree to without seeing the man face-to-face.

“I’m assuming the order is for worldwide distribution within your organization.” Dmitry dropped a sugar cube into his cup. He was tall and wide-shouldered, as charismatic as a TV star when he turned on the charm. People found it hard to notice anyone else when he was in the room—the perfect decoy.

Tsernyakov worked with a couple of men like him. Certain meetings required personal contact, and he’d much rather show someone else’s face than his own. He preferred to remain in the background and pretend to be a lowly clerk. This way, he could still see face-to-face the people he did business with and get a feel for them, but they wouldn’t remember him. Who paid any attention to servants? If ever questioned, they would give a description of Dmitry or one of his other stand-ins. Besides his inner circle, there were a few dozen associates around the world who could boast having negotiated with him in person. If ever questioned, they’d all give different descriptions.

“Correct.” The director sipped his tea.

“I also have worldwide interests,” Dmitry said. “What is my guarantee that our activities won’t interfere with each other?”

A few moments of silence passed in which Tsernyakov offered coffee to those who’d declined tea.

“You will get one day’s notice and the name of the country,” the director spoke with measure.

“One month’s notice and exact location,” Dmitry responded so cordially that no one would have guessed they were bargaining over the fate of millions.

A few moments of silence passed as the director squeezed more lemon into his tea. “I might not know a month ahead. Plans change. I can give you two weeks and the name of the town.”

Tsernyakov took the tray back toward the server and nodded slightly behind the delegation’s back.

“Let’s talk about delivery,” Dmitry said.

“The sooner the better,” was the director’s enthusiastic answer.

It was business. Good business. Big business. That was all. Tsernyakov hung back. He didn’t feel responsible for the astounding number of deaths that would result. That was the School Board’s problem, their deal.

He had killed when it was necessary, in the beginning. Now he had people who took care of that kind of unpleasantness in his life. Large-scale murder, however, held no appeal for him. It brought no money and got everyone in law enforcement after you. The concept of killing hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people for esoteric principles, without an ounce of profit, seemed plain stupid.

He looked at the men, but was thinking of his next meeting already. Business was exhilarating, and he took it very seriously. But the spice of life was seducing beautiful women.

What these idiots did had nothing to do with him. His role was to get the virus and collect the money. He took a last look at the men then walked out of the room, leaving Dmitry to finish up.

The two bodyguards outside the door followed him to the private elevator that worked with a key, one floor up to the very top where his private office and apartment were.

He walked to the apartment, nodded to the men to stay outside the door. He punched in the security code and walked in.

“Alexandra.”

The young woman flew into his arms—all grace and loveliness already at twenty. She’d lost a little weight, but even so…Grief looked good on her. It gave her fresh beauty a haunting quality that hadn’t been there before. Like good art, she was becoming multidimensional.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, still pressed against him.

She thought of him as an uncle. He would work to change that. He didn’t want to take her by force, although he would if she frustrated him too much. He preferred seduction. He was a romantic at heart. He enjoyed making women fall in love with him, the power of that, specifically because it was different from the power he held over his men, over his business associates.

“How are you? What can I do to make you happy?” he asked.

“When will I go home?”

“You are not comfortable here?” He made a point to look hurt.

“I don’t want to be a burden. I should arrange…I should take care of…” She didn’t seem to be able to finish the sentence.

“I’m handling your father’s affairs. Peter was my friend. It’s the least I can do.” He ran his hand down her back, glad that he had sent a man to pull her at the last second. She’d been told to go see the new puppies in the back of the factory yard while her parents discussed business. Then she was whisked to safety after the terrible accident.

“Thank you.” Her luminous violet eyes teared up. “I would love to stay a few more days.”

“Maybe you should stay longer.” He schooled his features into a somber look.

“What is it?” She watched him, catching his change of mood.

If she was this quick a study as a lover, he was going to be very happy with her.

He shook his head. “Nothing. I don’t—You don’t need any more worries right now.”

“Please,” she pleaded. “Is this about my parents?”

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. “That accident at the factory…”

“Yes?” She waited breathless, her lips slightly parted.

His body stirred. “I’m starting to think it might not have been an accident.”

She watched him with big round eyes and swayed a little. He was happy to support her.

“Somebody meant to kill them?” she asked finally.

“I’m not sure. Either them or me.” He stopped for a meaningful pause. “The pressure valve blew too early maybe. I was supposed to join them in a few minutes.” He shook his head then shrugged as if the possible threat to his own life was of no consequence. “In any case. I want to keep you safe until I figure out what’s going on.” His voice implied that he had the investigation well in hand.

She nodded, looking stunned and numb, but ethereally beautiful. He maneuvered her to the sprawling leather sofa with ease.

Chapter Three

“You must have been wondering what your mission is going to be.”

Brant Law stood at the head of a training room that was smaller, but much better furnished, than the prison classroom where the women had first met him. Tarasov and Moretti stood to the side, tension making the mood in the room brittle.

He turned to the desk that held his laptop and started a presentation, projecting his slides to the white screen on the wall. The first image was of a rectangle with a shadow of a man’s profile with a big question mark over it.

“Your target is someone who has managed to elude law enforcement for the last twenty years. He has no known picture. We haven’t been able to narrow his location to as much as a country. We don’t know his first name, or exactly how old he is.”

“So what do you know?” Gina spoke up.

The four women were together again. That she wasn’t completely alone in this mess made Carly feel slightly better, although she was far from trusting any of the people in the room. With her basic training over, she was allowed to spend most of her time in the computer lab while Nick was making mincemeat of the other women on the training course. She only saw him twice a day now. They ran together in the morning then did an hour of self-defense, and he continued her introduction to various guns for an hour each afternoon.

She was catching up with what she’d missed in information technology over the years, planning her disappearance, looking up some distant family on the Internet. She hadn’t contacted anyone to tell them that she was out. She never would, most likely. At the moment, not being able to discuss the mission, all she could tell them would be lies. And later, when she broke free, contact with anyone from her old life might lead law enforcement to her.

Her family had never been close. Her mother hadn’t kept in touch with her father’s side after his death. And since her mother was the only child of parents who had no siblings themselves, the pickings were all around slim for family reunions.

Anita and Gina had been allowed to call their families the first day they had arrived at the training facility, to tell them that they were out and involved in some kind of readjustment program where for a while they couldn’t be reached. They’d had visitors in prison who had to be told something. Sam had nobody, no clue where she came from, no memories of her life before she came to be living on the streets.

“We know him as Tsernyakov,” Law said as he pointed to the shadow outline. “But we’re not sure if that’s his real name. He is one of the biggest illegal weapons dealers in the world. We suspect he might have had some position in the old communist government in the USSR, might have been in the military—his access to large amounts of decommissioned weaponry points that way. He has ‘ears’ in every branch of law enforcement of just about every country. He has unlimited access to money. He is ruthless. If he thinks someone crossed him, he doesn’t wait for proof. He kills on first suspicion.”

“So you want us to do what? Take him out?” Gina asked.

Carly was taken aback as much by the question as by Gina’s casual tone. Anita’s hand flew to her throat.

“Getting a location on him would be enough.”

“Why us?” The question escaped Carly, spurred by suspicion. “I mean, even if you teach us everything you know, which is probably not possible, you still have tons more experience. Why not you, a commando team or the FBI?” Not that the setup didn’t sound intriguing—a lot like one of her favorite video games, which she hadn’t played in ages.

“As I said, you have a unique set of skills. But more importantly, you have something none of us do, a one hundred percent authentic background that doesn’t involve any agency work—an unbreakable cover.” He hesitated a moment. “And as far as we can tell, our target, Tsernyakov, has only one weakness—beautiful women.”

He looked uncomfortable saying that, as if he expected them to jump up and yell sexual harassment.

She glanced at the others. They were all looking around at each other. He was right, she realized. Anita was a classic Latin beauty. Gina was petite with pretty features, her body round in all the right places, and a pronounced presence that made her hard to ignore. Sam had the beauty of youth, in spades, those large green eyes that would swallow you up. She was the odd bird out, Carly thought of herself. Too tall, too athletically built to be called feminine. They got her for her hacking.

“How will we find him?” Anita regained her balance first.

“You don’t find Tsernyakov. Nobody does. Your job is to make him want to find you.”

“How?” Sam drew up a black eyebrow that had two silver rings in it. She’d somehow managed to get her hands on an amazing number of body ornaments within days of release.

“We are going to put you in his way. The rest is up to you.” Law brought up another slide, a map. “Cayman Islands, off-shore banking paradise. One of the money-laundering centers of the world.”

“We’re going?” For once Sam seemed to forget her aloof pose and sounded genuinely excited.

Carly tried hard to keep the grin off her face. One of the to-do items in her slowly forming escape plan was to find a way to get out of the country once she got away from the “mission.” Looked like they were going to help her out with that. Excellent.

“He’s got businesses there?” Gina asked, then when Law paused, she added with some sarcasm, “No, don’t tell me. You don’t know.”

“We don’t know whether Tsernyakov has interests on the island or not,” Law said in an even voice. “But we suspect that some people he’s involved with do. Your job will be to get to know these people, get them to trust you and have them lead you eventually to Tsernyakov. Or—” he paused “—more realistically, lead Tsernyakov to you.”

“What will we be doing exactly?” Anita asked.

“Your cover will be a consulting company that facilitates entrepreneurs in setting up small businesses. Miss Caballo will handle accounting, Miss Jones will do IT, Miss Torno will take care of security, including background checks on employees, and Miss Hanley is the support person for the team.”

“I’m the freakin’ secretary? No way.” Sam threw herself back in her seat.

“You’re an undercover agent in a top secret operation.”

Apparently, Law said the right thing because Sam didn’t make another comment. God, if she bought that line, she was obviously way too easily scammed. Somebody ought to watch out for the girl.

The agent brought up another slide that had the name Savall, Ltd. at the top with a logo, an address, phone and fax numbers, Web site address and mission statement.

“What else do you want us to do? A start-up consulting company isn’t going to attract much attention from the type of people Tsernyakov would hang with,” Gina said.

“Correct. Savall, Ltd. is your cover. What you’ll really be doing is money laundering.”

“Are you asking us to engage in illegal activities?” Anita sounded shocked.

“You need to move in the same circles that Tsernyakov’s associates move in. You are authorized by the FBI and CIA to use whatever means necessary to get close to the man.”

Carly shifted in her seat. Official carte blanche. Man, it sounded weird. She’d spent the last six years angry at the government for making something as innocent as a quest for knowledge a punishable offense. And now here was an FBI agent telling her to go ahead, break the law as she pleased.

“This is not gonna come back and bite us in the ass, no matter what?” Gina nailed the man with a hard look.

“Correct.”

“You need us, people with authentic backgrounds instead of existing agents, because if we get lucky enough to get this guy’s attention he’ll have us checked out and he knows people in the right places,” Gina thought out loud.

“Yes.”

“I’m guessing something like this would be a last-ditch effort,” she added.

Law didn’t respond.

“You tried before with your own men and didn’t succeed. Did he have them killed?” Gina pushed.

“We lost a number of operatives.”

The room went silent for a long minute, then Law brought up the next slide, more on what Savall, Ltd. did and a list of how they could help their clients.

“Miss Caballo was convicted for the embezzlement of nearly four million dollars that was never recovered. Your operations will imply that she had that money safely stashed away, met up with the rest of you in prison, and decided to start a company that would grow her nest egg outside of the United States.”

Four million dollars. Carly glanced at Anita, whose lips were pressed into a thin line. Damn, she hadn’t given the woman enough credit. She was all educated and classy, soft-spoken. But Anita had stolen four mil. Sam had done breaking and entering and boosted a couple of cars. Gina had killed a man.

Carly caught herself chewing her bottom lip and stopped. What was she doing here? She didn’t do teams. She’d always been the odd person out. All through school she’d taken accelerated classes, graduated from high school by fourteen, had her M.A. in computer science by twenty-one. She’d been the freak kid in every class. Her classmates, years older, had wanted nothing to do with her. She hadn’t been invited to parties, to sleepovers, to clubs. So she’d stayed home, on her computer, found online places to hang out where nobody had to know her real age.

Then she’d found her way into the vast and accepting community of hackers where being smart was no longer a disadvantage—dozens, hundreds of people just like her. For the first time ever there was a place where she’d been a perfect fit.

“So what’s going to keep us from taking off once you cut us loose?” Gina was asking.

Good question. Carly waited for the answer.

Sam seemed to perk up at the idea, too. She was leaning forward in her chair.

“You’ll be under constant surveillance. For your own safety.” Law nodded toward Tarasov, who stood to the side.

Great. Carly hung her head. Anyone but him. How on earth was she supposed to get away from that one? She closed her eyes for a moment. No. She was not going to let him intimidate her. She drew a deep breath and straightened her spine. She would find a way.

“Any questions about this part?” Law asked.

Anita raised her hand. “Has anyone managed to get close to this man and come back alive?”

He paused for a moment before responding, looked at the other two men, then back at the women. “None so far,” he said.

LITTLE PIG,LITTLE PIG, let me come in. Carly’s fingers flew over the keyboard as she bombarded the firewall of her target company with various bits of code, hoping to find the tiniest crack that would allow her entrance into their system.

Anita stuck her head through the half-open door. “That keyboard is about to start smoking. Any progress?”

“Lots. But not enough to get through.” They’d been on Grand Cayman for almost two weeks. She’d broken into Costa-Costa, Inc.’s system, a family owned French firm, on day three. The others were trickier. She was feeling the six years she’d wasted in prison. She’d been working day and night to catch up with the latest versions of programs she had missed. Might as well do that now while she was here, surrounded with the latest and best equipment money could buy. She might not have access again to stuff like this for some time to come.

On their first day on the island, Brant Law had given her a list of ten companies that were suspected of money laundering. Carly had been systematically trying to disassemble their computer defenses.

Her goal—as far as their mission was concerned—was twofold. She wanted to get into their systems to identify their client lists, cross-reference those lists and see if there were any names on it that had also been tied to Tsernyakov. Her other, more immediate goal was to get the client lists so she would know which companies needed money laundering. Anita then could approach those and offer the services of Savall, Ltd. They had to make a name for themselves, be known enough to raise Tsernyakov’s interest.

She wasn’t in a hurry. She was making plans on her own and implementing them. Her disappearance was going to require a lot of careful planning, which she did each day. She was working on getting fake papers, several sets of them, money, and investigating various locations around the world where she could hide out for the long term.

She couldn’t not give her “official” quest at the office one hundred percent—her own thirst for solutions demanded that—but she wasn’t rushing. She did careful work, looking for the best method to do things even if that wasn’t the quickest, taking time to learn along the way.

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