Hot Mercy (Affairs of State Book 2) (26 page)

“You know something about local ship wrecks?” Mercy asked, keeping her voice light.

“I know a good deal about finding lost things.” He lowered his shades and an electric blue gaze sent lovely shivers up her spine.

Like me?

She had to get Sebastian away from Glen. If he didn’t want Glen to know who he was, or why he was here, she trusted he had his reasons.

She batted her eyelashes. “I’d love to hear more.”

“Me too,” Glen interjected quickly. “Old wrecks fascinate me.”

“I thought you wanted to watch the game?” Mercy glanced pointedly at the TV above the bar, displaying a lively soccer match between the islands of Tortola and Virgin Gorda.

Glen glowered at her then accepted her verbal nudge as a signal to let her handle the stranger. “Yeah, right. I’d hate to miss a goal.” He swiveled around on his stool and stared obediently at the screen.

“Care to join me at my table?” Sebastian asked.

Mercy signaled the bartender to bring her a fresh drink. She seized Sebastian by the arm, digging in her fingers as they walked. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she hissed.

He calmly pulled out a chair for her. “I bring you news.”

“What news? And how did you find me?” She plopped down hard then repositioned her body in an attempt to look relaxed.

“Not the issue, querida.”

“It might be,” she said. “Since you’re interfering with something important I have to do.”

“Sticking your neck out again for the CIA?” His eyes snapped to hers then away again. Immediately casual, should anyone be watching them.

“Not the CIA,” she muttered. The tension between them physically drained her. She gritted her teeth until they ached, then plunged on. “All I can say is that I’m doing what I need to do. People are actively looking into my mother’s situation and I’m—”

“Risking your life.”

“For a damn good cause!” she hissed.

He sighed. “I’ll take your word on that. But in another part of the world, events aren’t proceeding as you may have been led to believe they would.” 

Was he talking about Ukraine? What had he found out?

Before she could ask, Sebastian produced a folded brochure from his jacket pocket and spread it open on the table. In bright colors it displayed a map of tourist-friendly shipwrecks, beaches, and restaurants in the Virgin Islands.

“Play along, querida,” he whispered. He pointed at several spots on the map, smiling as if excited to share with her locations for snorkeling or dining. His voice stayed low, flirtatious. “I’ve contacted a man in Belarus who might help us get into Ukraine.”

Us? she thought, but didn’t point out his slip. “You did that for me? Really?” She smiled and would have asked for details but he interrupted.

“Yes, and I was on my way here to tell you when something came up. I don’t know if you’ve read a newspaper in the last twenty-four hours, or heard from Talia’s boyfriend in New York. Mark’s his name, right?”

“Yes. And I’ve only seen the local rag since arriving,” she said. “It’s not big on world news.”

He nodded solemnly. “You mother’s editor has been murdered. In New York. I couldn’t get much information, but I’d say it looks like a contract job.”

“Harold? My God!” Mercy clutched the edge of the metal table. “Are you serious? What happened?”

The music had grown louder, steel drums clattering and chiming in a joyful cacophony, for which Mercy was grateful as the noise covered her near hysterical shout.

“My theory is—the same people who sent that thug after you in DC intend to silence anyone who might have received information about or evidence of the Tambov’s activities in Ukraine. That includes anyone with a close personal or professional connection to Talia. They’re taking out insurance. ”

A chilling thought occurred to her. “Evelyn. . .at the gallery. And Mark!”

“I’ve asked around. It seems the FBI is already involved. They’re watching over both of them.”

At least someone was taking these maniacs seriously. “But why didn’t—” She almost said Margaret Storey's name. “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”

“Maybe your handlers don’t want you to drop what you’re doing here and rush off to Eastern Europe. Because, as far as I’ve been able to find out, despite Interpol’s or the State Department’s possible good intentions, and whatever they’ve promised you, there’s very little happening over there to help your mother.”

Mercy’s dropped her head into her hands. Certainly, she’d known from the beginning that Geddes and Red Sands weren’t to be totally trusted. But she’d thought she would be able to exert some control, some pressure on them, perhaps with Margaret’s help.

Sebastian was still speaking, masquerading the seriousness of their discussion with a soft, seductive voice. Still smiling that delicious Latin smile of his, the same he’d flashed at her for Glen’s benefit moments earlier. She knew he was putting on an act, but her body still reacted to his closeness, lust curling inside her. Inappropriate, she told herself. No matter how much she wanted to touch him, to be touched, her mother’s fate came first.

“I’ve called in a few favors from old friends,” he was saying.

She played with her drink’s miniature parasol, trying to keep her fingertips busy and tremble-free. “You mean criminals.”

“
Si
.” He lifted a roguish black brow. Who else? “The word is the Tambov Syndicate believes that your mother sent you and her editor photographs and descriptions of their operations in Pripyat. They’ve been harvesting abandoned, irradiated building materials, personal items, art, jewelry, gold, anything of value and selling it to unsuspecting buyers in Europe, Asia, the U.S. It’s a billion-dollar business, and they want to make sure no one takes the story to the Press.”

Most of this she already knew. “But my mother sent me nothing.” Mercy sucked the cherry off the plastic parasol-pick and sipped the syrupy concoction. The drink’s sweetness was cloying, making her throat sugary-raw. She pushed it away. “One of the photos I received while in Mexico, from the magazine’s office, showed the Number 4 reactor in Chernobyl. But that doesn’t prove they’re running a black market, or doing anything else illegal.”

“But the Tambovs don’t know your mother hasn’t been in communication with you,” Sebastian reasoned. “Maybe they found something on Talia, or in her hotel room in Kiev, that indicated she planned to contact you.”

He shifted closer to her, touching a finger to her lips as if he knew what the intimacy of that gesture would do to her. She felt a sensual tug down low in her body that expanded with warmth—a reminder of their night at the Hay-Adams and the delicious things they’d done together and to each other. Again and again.

His expression darkened as he withdrew his hand. Mercy forced herself to focus, sensing his next words would be even more important and deserved her full attention.

“My sources say that their goons snatched Talia off the tour bus,” Sebastian said. “They seized her camera. Later, they tore apart her room in the Dnipro Hotel in Kiev, presumably looking for evidence she might have hidden there. But the management had already removed her personal effects. Before her attackers could get hold of them, the items were sent to
GeoWorld
in New York.”

Mercy guessed what had happened next. “So the Tambovs arranged for someone to snatch my mother’s things when they arrived in New York,” she said. “But what they were looking for didn’t turn up. They assumed Harold, after looking over everything, returned Talia’s notes and photographs to Mark or me?”

Sebastian nodded. “Exactly.”

“I suppose whatever other photographs she took were still in her cameras and destroyed when they captured her.”

“Cameras?” he asked.

“She always carried more than one. At least one digital and a 35-millimeter.” Mercy stopped talking to work the lump of emotion around in her throat before she could manage another word. Her world was closing in around her, dimming, squeezing. She could barely breathe.
Oh, God…oh, God…Mom!
At last, she recovered her composure and voice. “What I still can’t grasp is what happened to her after the Tambovs took her. It’s a horrid thought but…why not kill her then? Why give her even the remotest chance to escape?”

Sebastian grimaced and looked away across the sapphire-blue Caribbean, toward the lush hillsides of St. John. Gulls wheeled and screeched overhead. A great, gray-feathered, leggy heron took flight with a fish trapped in its elegant long bill.

Mercy read the horrible answer to her question in Sebastian’s troubled gaze. At last, she sucked in a breath. “You're thinking that they had to find out exactly what she knew and might have told others. Do you think they tortured her?”

“Probably.” His voice had turned gravel dry. “But they might not have had much time with her. The man I’ve spoken with over there has made inquiries. Based on what he’s learned, he believes she didn’t actually escape. It’s more likely someone snatched her from the bad guys.”

“Rescued her? Who?”
And why?

Sebastian leaned in still closer. “Maybe rescued. Maybe had their own agenda. What that might be, I can’t tell you,
querida.
” He laid his hand over her fingers on the table. His thumb massaged the back of her hand, his touch bringing life back to numb flesh. “But the police won’t try to help find her as long as the syndicate is after her. In fact,” he winced, as if hating to add to her fears, “if local police do find her, they are just as likely to turn her back over to the Tambovs for a reward.”

Mercy closed her eyes and pressed the still-cold glass to her throbbing temple. “Damn it, Sebastian. What am I going to do if I’ve lost her?” The pain in her chest was unbearable.

Sebastian squeezed her hand. “That’s why I’m here.”

She looked up at him, even as she felt Glen sneaking glances their way. “To tell me that it’s hopeless? Oh, my God! That’s what you’ve been saying, isn’t it?”

“No,” he said, “I’ve come to offer you a choice.”

She stared at him, waiting, holding her breath as though it was a way to hold onto hope.

Sebastian went on. “When you were with me in Mexico, you told me that if you could get into Ukraine you would search for your mother.”

“But that’s impossible. I’m sure I’d be stopped at the airport if I tried to leave the islands for anywhere but the States. And I don’t have a visa to get into Ukraine or—”

He flipped open the left lapel of his jacket to show the tops of two blue U.S. passports sticking up from his inside breast pocket. Mercy stared at him, suddenly understanding.

“Counterfeit?” she whispered.

He nodded. “I have everything we need to get both of us into Poland and then Ukraine.”

“You did this for me?” She stared at him, in awe of the man, moved beyond words. It wasn’t just a piece of fraudulent paper he was offering her. He was putting his life on the line for her, too.

Sebastian shrugged, but the gesture failed to look blasé. Every muscle in his body appeared rigid with tension, a reflection of the emotions gripping her. “I know what it is to lose a parent,” he said.

His father.
Oh, Sebastian!
She ached to embrace him in gratitude. But there were still so many complications. If she left the VI now, the mission incomplete…the consequences might prove disastrous. Would her leaving guarantee that Chameleon would win—giving terrorists millions in additional funds to orchestrate another 9/11 assault? Didn’t she, at the very least, owe Margaret and Glen an explanation?

Mercy squeezed her eyes shut. Her brain told her: Act for the greater good. Sacrifice one life to save many. That was the logical choice. But what did you do when that one life was the woman who'd given birth to you?

It took her less than the space between two heartbeats to choose.

                                          29

They landed at Okecie Airport after a turbulent red-eye flight across the Atlantic to Rome and from there to Poland. From the dynamic cosmopolitan city of Warsaw, Mercy and Sebastian drove east in a rented baby-blue Russian Lada, toward Brest. The Carpathian Mountains, snow-crowned ghostly giants, rose majestically in the distance as the sun crept up a cloudless morning sky.

At the Polish-Belarus border, customs agents scrutinized Mercy’s and Sebastian’s documents. The survival drill on her last day at Red Sands’ boot camp came to mind. If challenged by these harsh-faced soldiers, could she keep her cool and talk her way out of trouble? To her relief they were allowed to pass after only a few questions.

As the Lada rumbled east along the M13 highway, across the agricultural plains of Belarus and endless fields of yellow grain, Mercy struggled with her guilt at having ditched Glen and Margaret. Her last message left in the bar stool at Tickles had been three words:
I shall return
: a famous quote, from another era and another kind of war. Had General Douglas MacArthur kept his promise after leaving Corregidor during World War II? She couldn’t remember. Would she?

Mercy had wanted to leave the Red Sands’ agents an explanation. But she didn’t dare for fear of them stopping her or informing Geddes before she could leave the island. All he’d need to do was pick up a phone, and Federal agents would detain her, keeping her from boarding the plane. Or they’d be waiting for her in Poland. By the time she and Sebastian were halfway across Belarus she managed to shoo her guilt into a dim corner of her mind, to be dealt with later. If she could, she would find a way to make things right with her Caribbean team.