The Cold Edge (29 page)

Anna had spotted two men near that second car, and one, she thought, might have been Jake. The jacket looked the same. But both men were down and that bothered and concerned her.

When Kjersti set the Bell down near the second car, Anna was the first out, running toward the car, her gun out and her eyes scanning the area. But she went only one place—toward the one she thought was Jake.

She rounded the car and saw him near the ditch, his body slumped over in the grass. She rushed to Jake now, dropping her gun to the ground as she picked up Jake's head and set it in her lap. His bristly face was covered with blood splatter from where a bullet had struck his shoulder. His clothes were wet and dirty, full of pine pitch. She pried the 9mm handgun from his right hand and started to cry. God, don't take him from me. Not now.

Sobbing, she whispered to him, “Jake. It's Anna. Wake up, lover.” She kissed him on the lips, hoping to bring him to life.

Time seemed to linger in a strange tempo of nothingness, the only sound now of birds chirping and trees slowly swaying in a light breeze.

“Wake up, Jake,” she said louder. “You've got to wake up. I can't do this alone.”

Kjersti came over and checked the man in the ditch. “It's Victor Petrova,” she said to Anna. “He's dead.”

Jake yawned first and then his eyes opened slowly. “They're all dead,” he muttered. “What took you guys so long? I left enough bread crumbs.”

Anna kissed him again on the lips and then hugged him tightly.

“Oww,” Jake said. “Watch the shoulder.”

“I'm sorry.”

They both heard someone running up the road and they turned to see Colonel Reed and Toni Contardo.

“What the hell are you two doing here?” Jake said.

But neither of them said a word. They just stopped and stood about ten feet back, both with a look of uncertainty on their faces.

“The Agency sent Toni with the scientists,” Anna explained.

“I'm sorry, Jake,” Colonel Reed finally said.

Jake shook his head. “No problem, colonel. That little troll is dead. He had people running all over for him. We just got caught up in his grand scheme.”

Anna tried to help Jake to his feet. When she couldn't do it alone, Kjersti helped her. Together they got Jake up and the three of them struggled toward the helo. Toni and Colonel Reed followed closely behind.

After sitting against the chopper for a minute, drinking a full bottle of water, Jake stood on his own and took in a deep breath, stretching his muscles like a cat getting up from a nap.

“I've gotta get something,” Jake said. “And I need to do it alone.”

They all let him pass, and he wandered up the road about a hundred yards before scooting into the woods. About two minutes later, he came out carrying a metal box in his left arm like a baby.

He walked up to them smiling. “Now we can go.”

Anna said, “What about the bodies? How do we explain them?”

Kjersti said, “I'll take care of that. But first we need to get Jake out of the country and to a doctor.”

Now Toni spoke up for the first time. “One of the scientists is a medical doctor. He can patch Jake up on the Agency Gulfstream. Where do you want to go?”

Jake shrugged his only good shoulder—the one with the box of gems. “Back to Austria.”

“What happens to those?” Colonel Reed asked, his eyes on the metal box.

“Jake taught me an American idiom,” Anna said. “Finders keepers?”

“She's right,” Toni said. “They were found by Jake. And since he's not affiliated with any government agency, he has the right to keep them.”

Jake smiled. “Colonel, do you still work for the Agency?”

“Not officially,” Colonel Reed said.

“Then you'll get some of this,” Jake said. “So will the families of our two officers who died in the Arctic in eighty-six—Steve Olson and John Korkala. Let's go. No offense, Kjersti, but I think I've seen enough of Norway for a while.”

Kjersti smiled and got into the chopper. Moments later, they were all inside, airborne, and on their way to Oslo.

A week later, nestled in the small chalet in the mountains near Zell am See, Austria, Jake sipped a glass of Italian Chianti and stared at the fire burning in the stone fireplace. It was late evening, darkness complete across the Alps.

He thought about the last week. They had flown on the Agency Gulfstream from Oslo to Vienna, the doctor patching up Jake on the plane. Jake had insisted on no stitches, instead asking only for Durmabond liquid sutures. The bullet had bounced off his scapula and collarbone, but had not entered his chest.

From Vienna Jake had taken a couple of days, first traveling to Luxembourg to secure the gems in a large safe deposit box. Then he flew with a couple of the Alexandrites to Zurich to have them examined. As he suspected, each one would be worth thousands of dollars, and he had not even taken the time to find out how many had been contained in the metal box. But he guessed the total would come to at least ten million dollars.

Anna came in from the bathroom, a look of both pleasure and despair on her expressive face. She took a seat next to him on the leather sofa.

“Want me to pour you a glass?” Jake asked her. “It's quite good.”

“I can't,” she said.

“I told you, I will not start drinking like I did before. I was bored and going through some things. I'm better now. I can handle it. Just a little in moderation. Come on. I don't want to drink alone.”

“You're gonna have to. For at least six more months.”

Jake stared at her for a moment until he finally understood what she meant. “Are you sure?”

She produced a self-pregnancy stick. “This is the sixth one in the last few days. I wanted to be sure.”

“The throwing up wasn't a bug you caught, or your problem with flying in choppers. My God, how the hell did I miss that?”

They stared at each other.

“What will we do?” she asked him.

Without thinking, Jake said, “First, I trade in some of those Russian gems. We'll need to dump our apartment in Vienna and find a place in the mountains. I won't raise a son in the city.”

She squeezed down on his leg. “It could be a girl.”

Thoughts of young men coming around after his teenage daughter raced through his mind, with Jake grilling each one and threatening to break every bone in their body if they touched his little girl. “No, I think we'll have a boy. But we need to make it legal. How does Monaco sound?”

“I don't care,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “As long as it's with you.”

They kissed long and passionately. Then they sat back in the leather sofa and watched the flames, listening only to the snapping and crackling of fire.

The next few minutes seemed to stand still.

When the first bullet crashed through the front picture window, Jake didn't fully understand what was happening. As he picked up his gun and instinctively rolled to the floor, aiming toward the door, he fired at the first man who crashed through.

In the next thirty seconds, the large room filled with the loud echoing reports of gunfire, the smell of gun powder and cloud of smoke lingering in the air.

Then the noise stopped. Even the ringing in Jake's ears gone.

On his knees now, Jake looked at his gun, the slide locked back and magazine empty. His left eye closed from moisture, which he tried to wipe away with his left sleeve. But the moisture continued to soak into his eye. He didn't feel the pain from the bullet striking his left leg, or the one that had blown through the shoulder that had been shot in Sweden.

Crawling to the sofa, Jake dropped his gun when he saw Anna slumped against the cushions. Her chest had two bullet holes, her stomach a third and her right arm a fourth. Getting to the sofa with her, he checked her pulse as he took her in his arms.

Nothing.

Getting his phone out, Jake called for an ambulance, barely able to tell them his location before setting the cell phone down onto an end table, the phone still on.

He was frozen in time. Couldn't understand that which was before him. He simply held Anna against him, his own breaths shallow now.

He wouldn't hear the ambulance come. Could not understand what had happened to him. He just drifted off with Anna in his arms, tears streaking his cheeks.

Without Options
(Jake Adams #7)

The Stone of Archimedes
(Jake Adams #8)