Hot Mercy (Affairs of State Book 2) (18 page)

The ankle strap on her right sandal broke. She kicked it off then its mate. Sprinting barefoot across sharp gravel now, she tried to ignore the pain. The soles of her feet flamed.

Another ping. Pebbles spit up from the ground, pricking her bare legs. She didn’t dare look back to see how close he was. Where were all those brawny stevedores she always heard about hanging around docks?

Then Mercy saw it. Spotlighted beneath a bank of flood lamps was a metal gate at least ten feet tall.
Thank God!
Even as she ran toward it, electric gears were grinding the gate slowly closed behind a big forklift driven by a man in neon-orange overalls. But there was no one else around, no one to call out to and beg to keep the gate open for her.

She tore straight for the narrowing space, praying she’d be able to get through before the massive thing clanked shut.

“Hey!” the forklift driver shouted as she shimmied through, the opening now only eighteen inches wide. He slowed down.

She kept on running and cut across the path of the moving machine, waving her arms, signaling him to stop.

“You want to get run over, lady?” He yanked on the handbrake, and the lift shuddered to a noisy stop. “It’s dangerous in here.”

You have no idea!
“That man attacked me,” she gasped, positioning herself so that the lift stood between her and the Russian, who was even now trying to force his immense bulk through the remaining space between gate and fence.

“Call Security. Please!” Mercy pleaded. “He has a gun.”

The skinny man in orange stared at her, then at Yegorov who was prying open the metal jaws of the motorized gate with his massive hands.

“Hey you, stop that!” the driver shouted. “You’ll bust it.”

Metal grated on metal. The motor gave up with a groan and defeated clank. Yegorov shoved his body through the opening and shot Mercy a victorious glare.

The forklift driver swore, reached for a walkie-talkie on the seat beside him and barked into it. She caught the words “Security” and “Gate Two” but the rest was garbled. Then he was reaching down a hand to Mercy. “Jump on, lady.”

She hauled herself aboard, keeping Yegorov in sight and her head low within the cab of the vehicle. Her chauffer full-throttled his machine, but it was barely moving at jogging speed.

The Kalishnikov cranked off a dozen rounds. Bullets ricocheted off the steel cab frame.

Orange man ducked. “Fuck! You didn’t say he was shooting at you.”

“I told you he had a gun. What do you think they’re for? Drive!” she screamed, although she knew the lumbering lift couldn’t possibly outrun her pursuer.

From around the corner of a loading dock three men in black jumpsuits appeared at a run. They stopped short when they saw the lift racing toward them, Yegorov tearing after it.

“Are they his or yours?” Mercy shouted.

He ignored her. “He’s got a piece!” he called out to new arrivals.

This seemed to irritate more than concern the trio. One pulled a club out from his belt at the back of his waist. The other two produced handguns. They split up. Using stacks of cargo containers for shelter, they circled around the yard. She grasped their strategy—cut the intruder off from the destroyed gate then close in on him from different directions.

“What the hell did you do to get him so mad at you?”

“It’s a long story,” she gasped. And anyway, she couldn’t tell him.

The guards stepped out from their wall of containers and started closing in on the Russian. He stopped running, planted barn-sized feet and glowered at one then another of them. He reminded her of a bull surrounded by picadors, assessing which man to charge first.

Apparently Yegorov was smart enough to realize the odds weren’t in his favor. He turned and ran between two of the men, getting off more shots in passing but hitting nothing before they overtook him. All three piled on, struggling to pin him to the ground.

“Thank you,” Mercy breathed, closing her eyes in relief.

When she opened them, the forklift driver was staring at her with something like disgust. “You tourists. Anywhere there’s a palm tree, you think it’s paradise. Like crime doesn’t exist. What were you thinking, walking around alone at night?”

Mercy chose not to respond. She was tired and cranky, couldn’t remember where she’d ditched her sandals and she didn’t feel like going back to look for them. Three-hundred-dollar shoes—gone. “Thanks,” she said to her rescuer. “And goodnight.”

Jumping down from the cab she marched toward the broken gate, avoiding the man pile on the ground. One of the guards was cuffing Yegorov, who appeared to have been rendered unconscious. She wished she’d seen them clobber him. She hoped the island police would throw him in a cell and lose the key.

She could hear the forklift engine grinding behind her, sounding as if it was getting closer.
Just what I need, another lecture.

“You look familiar,” the driver said almost pleasantly, as if nothing at all unusual had occurred that evening.

“I doubt it.”

“Where you from, lady?”

Would this night never end? All she wanted was to get back to the relative safety of her suite. To hell with texting Margaret or waiting around for the third team member to surface. Red Sands had supplied her with an emergency phone number—to be used only in the most urgent situations. Where it rang, she had no idea but she’d use it as soon as she was alone.

However, the dock guy wasn’t giving up. The forklift rumbled up alongside her. “You sound American.”

“I am.” So did he.
Stick to the legend
. “From DC. Guess these were the wrong docks for yacht shopping.”

His foot must have released the gas pedal; the lift slowed to a stop and fell silent. Mercy continued on, thankful he’d lost interest.

“You aren’t by any chance interested in seeing the island’s famous sea turtles, are you?” he called after her.

Oh, shit,
she thought.

Mercy turned to study the man who had just saved her ass. He was scrawny, unshaven, wearing a dirty black knit skull cap topped by a construction helmet. His day-glo overalls looked two sizes too big for him, besides being in pitiful need of laundering.

“Sea Turtle?” she said, hoping not.

“Ms. O’Brien, I presume.”

She rolled her eyes, and a look flashed across his face that matched her own unspoken disappointment. She reversed direction and started walking back toward him.

“Call me Glen,” he muttered, so low she could hardly hear him. “What the hell were they thinking?”

“I beg your pardon?” If this was her partner, they couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start. She hadn’t exactly proven her ability at handling a crisis.

He climbed down off the forklift and walked over to her. “They told me my partner in this gig was a specialist with proven experience.” He looked her up and down. “And this is what turns up.”

An angry flush burned across her cheeks. “I don’t need this,” she growled and whipped her cell phone out of her pants pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“Filing an emergency request for a new partner.”

“
You
are?” He sputtered in disbelief. “I’m not the one who was running barefoot across a shipyard while screaming bloody murder. Don’t you realize you’ve compromised us by dragging a mugger, and probably island law enforcement, into the middle of the mission?”

Mercy threw up her hands, about faced, and stormed away from him. She was absolutely not going to work with this man.

Hadn’t she done exactly what the self-defense TI told her to do? She was unarmed and the man had a freakin’ Kalishnikov! Her job had been to get the hell away from her attacker any way she could. Right? Letting him blow her away would have compromised the mission a good deal more seriously.

Mercy heard footsteps following her. “Go away!” she shouted over her shoulder.

“Okay, okay…I’m sorry. I don’t like this any better than you do.” Orange Man, aka Sea Turtle, aka Glen caught up with her. “I guess we have to cooperate.

“I’ll handle my part—the yacht. You handle yours—the container ship. We file separate reports.” She kept moving.

“I need you, O’Brien.”

When she looked back the smugness had left his brown eyes.

“A minute ago,” she said, “I was the albatross around your neck. Now you need me?”

He shrugged. “Hey, I’ve seen slicker first contacts.”

“Live with it!” she snapped. “They gave me two weeks to prepare for this. I think I did pretty well considering that ape chasing me was a Tambov assassin.”

His entire face transformed, hardening but still skeptical. “No way.”

“Way.” She took a deep breath and stared the length of the dark loading dock. The guard trio was hauling away a limp Yegorov. Harmless enough looking, for the moment. She shivered at the thought of what he’d do to her once he woke up, if he got loose. “Look, we can’t stand here talking. Anyone could hear us.”

Glen nodded. “I’ll make an excuse to the dock master and meet you at your hotel. You’re at the Ritz-Carlton, right?”

“Suite 203.” She cast his outfit a doubtful look. “Though I doubt they’ll let you past the lobby.” He curled a lip at her.

                                          19

Shortly after midnight, a young man presented himself at the door to Mercy’s suite. He looked nothing like the grubby dockworker she’d met earlier. Sandy-blond hair, a pleasant face, intelligent brown eyes, Glen—she still didn’t know his last name—wore neatly pressed chinos and a clean, short-sleeve plaid shirt. He looked more like an Ivy League college student on the debating team than a spy.

“I’m impressed.” She waved him through the door and into her rooms.

“I’m afraid the news I bear will fall far short of my dazzling appearance.”

Mercy cocked an eyebrow. “Now that’s a shame.” She led the way to the living room, done up in white wicker furniture with garden-green upholstery and lush bouquets of tropical flowers arranged in crystal vases.

He stopped in the middle of the sea of plush ivory carpeting, looked around and sighed. “Why do I never get these assignments?”

“Because you can drive a forklift and I can’t?”

“Big mistake, telling them about those summer construction jobs,” he said.

She thought she caught a whiff of a Boston accent. “Where are you from?”

“Grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts. North shore of Boston. Graduated Harvard Business School five years ago. You?”

“American University, in D.C., but I studied art at the Sorbonne.”

“Oo-la-la.” He rolled his eyes.

She shrugged. “I’d never worked harder in my life.”

“But I’ll bet you dined like a queen.”

She smiled, liking him better with every minute. His personality seemed to have changed along with his clothing. “Something to drink? Or do you consider this on-duty.”

“If you have any kind of beer I’ll take it in a heartbeat.” He sat on the couch and eyed the carved wooden fruit bowl on the coffee table. Mangoes, plums, tangerines, papaya, and fuzzy green fruits she never could remember the name of, piled high.

She brought him a Heineken from the wet bar refrigerator and for herself a frosty glass of chardonnay.

“So what’s the bad news?” she asked.

He took two swallows of his beer, then braced elbows on his knees and tucked the dark green bottle between his hands. “Before we get to that, I want to know why a Russian mafia hitman was chasing you.”

Kiwi
, she thought, the fuzzy green fruit. Clearly, her brain was trying to distract her from thinking about the harder issues at hand. Like why someone wanted her dead, or whether her mother was still alive. But Glen was waiting for an answer.

“To be honest,” she admitted, “I’m not completely sure. Director Geddes thinks the Russian mob is afraid I know something about a smuggling ring they’re operating out of Ukraine.”

Glen’s eyes widened. “Interesting. And what have you done to attract their attention?”

She supposed there was no way around the conversation. “My mother’s the photojournalist, Talia O’Brien.”

“I’ve heard of her,” he said, nodding his head. “And about her disappearance. I’m sorry.”

“It appears that she found out about this smuggling ring, and they think she forwarded incriminating information to me.”

He gazed solemnly into the neck of his beer bottle. “That's not good. It's sure to complicate things here. For the mission, I mean.”

“Particularly if Yegorov gets loose any time soon. Is there anything you can do to make sure the police don’t release him?” she asked.

“Shouldn’t be too hard. They have a terrible time with drugs here. The VIPD doesn’t look kindly on foreigners importing crime into their islands.”

“Good.” She sipped her wine. The icy liquid cooled her throat, which felt abnormally hot, almost feverish. “Next on the agenda: I want to clear up any misunderstanding you might have about my background.”