Red Dawn Rising (Red Returning Trilogy) (28 page)

A time passed that Liesl couldn’t measure in minutes, only in layers peeled away from the core of Cass Rodino. As she unfolded the story of Rachel Norman’s suicide, Liesl prayed silently for God to embrace this tormented young woman who was reaching for help.

Liesl was new to prayer yet wholly convinced of its powers, the ones she summoned at this moment. Soon after Cass ended her story, Liesl told her, “You’ve mourned far too long. You’re convinced you are to blame for this girl taking her own life. But that’s what
she
did, not you. It was her choice, and she didn’t have to choose death. It’s very likely that something else was working her to that point, something besides her boyfriend’s betrayal—and yours. Maybe it was shame over her own indiscretions. Maybe fear of her parents’ outrage and rejection. I don’t know. But what I do know is this. You’re looking for forgiveness, and I’m glad. That’s the
only
thing that will heal you. It won’t come from Rachel, but it will come from God if you’ll ask for it.”

Cass started to speak, then faltered. Finally, “I don’t know how to do that.”

“You start by just talking to him. He’s as real and close to you as I am right now. So just talk. It’s not hard. It’s—”

“Ma’am,” one of the agents called to Liesl. “Your escort just arrived. Please come with me, but wait inside for them.”

Liesl grabbed her bag. “We’ll talk again soon,” she told Cass, who rose to accompany her to the front of the lobby.

“We’d better be sure it’s FBI in that car,” Cass warned as they approached the window and looked out. “Will you recognize them?”

When Liesl didn’t answer, Cass turned to her. “Will you?” she prodded, but still no answer. “What’s the—”

Liesl suddenly cried out and flew to the door before the agents could stop her.

“Cade!”

The man who’d just climbed from the charcoal-gray sedan at the curb turned and stretched out both arms. Liesl rushed headlong into them and buried her face against his neck, not caring that a trio of bodyguards hovered nearby. Her tears streaming, she tried to speak, but he quieted her.

“Don’t talk,” Cade whispered. “Just hold.”

She clung to him as if she might slip into some bottomless crevasse if she let go.

When he finally lowered her to her feet, his arms still wrapped snugly around her, he looked deep into her eyes. “From here on, no matter what comes our way, we confront it together.” Behind his declarative words, she heard the pleading. She slipped a gloved hand to his cheek and caressed it, running her fingers over his lips. He lowered his face to hers and swept her mouth with a fevered kiss. Then more. When he finally pulled away, he looked back at the car parked beside them. “Mark Delaney must be on broil by now.”

“That’s Delaney?” she asked, turning to look inside the car.

“It is. The guy’s really ticked that he had to bring me along. He must be spitting tacks over this public display of ours. We’d better go.” He pulled her rapidly to the car, flinging open the back door and climbing in behind her. “Agent Delaney, you remember Liesl Bower.”

Already turned in his seat, Special Agent Mark Delaney cocked one hard-line brow at Cade. “I don’t run a dating service, Mr. O’Brien. You don’t jump out of my car like that and draw the subject into the open, then proceed to make a spectacle out of her. Don’t you understand that there’re people out there who want to kill her?”

Liesl felt Cade’s body jerk. “Agent Delaney,” Liesl began, “I’m the one who forced that little scene, and I’m sorry. Now, can we go?” Just then, though, she remembered something.

“Agent Delaney, may I go inside for just a moment? I need a word with Cass.”

He shook his head and motioned for his driver to go, then turned and looked through the back window, issuing a terse reply to Liesl’s request. “No. They’re taking her upstairs now.”

When his eyes lingered on a spot behind them, Liesl and Cade both turned to look that way. There was a car fast on their bumper and another just pulling up alongside. Delaney’s driver signaled for that car to move ahead. Now, they were sandwiched in an FBI caravan and picking up speed.

Delaney’s phone rang. Liesl watched him glance at the screen. “Delaney.” Pause. “That’s right. To the church. Full alert.”

Chapter 30

H
ans parked his Mercedes at an isolated dock on the East River. Used mostly for trips to Southampton, the car sat like a prince among paupers on this squalid stretch of waterfront, sulking beneath the hostile glare of the spotlight. Hans could only hope it would be intact when he returned. He would need it more than ever then.

In the trunk was the suitcase he had packed while Jilly took her afternoon nap. When he reached the beach house that night, he would gather everything else he needed for his departure. He would remove the vile man he’d become from the lives of those he loved.

Promptly at six, a rusty trawler pulled alongside the dock, and a young man in heavy-weather gear jumped from the stern with a line in his hand and tied it into a snappy figure eight around a cleat. From on board, the captain tossed the bow line to the boy, and he repeated the maneuver at the other end of the boat. When he finished, he stood almost at attention as Hans boarded.

Hans was used to the military bearing of the young man and his middle-aged captain. He had made this jaunt upriver several times before, whenever Ivan felt the need for greater privacy than the UN apartment allowed. Hans anticipated a debriefing of sorts and a pump-up-the-troops review. He wasn’t prepared for what happened.

Descending the steps to a well-furnished salon below deck—incongruent with the grimy exterior of the boat—Hans cordially greeted Ivan and Sonya, seated and waiting for him. It appeared there was no one else in the room. He was wrong. From behind him, someone grabbed both his arms and pinned them to his sides while an accomplice wrapped a heavy cord about him, shoved him into a metal chair, and strapped him to it. Hans cried out and tried to wrestle free, but to no avail. The boat was moving.

“Anything else, sir?” one of the assailants asked Ivan.

“No. Leave us.”

Hans jerked his head toward the two men. Then he turned raging eyes on Ivan. “Have you gone mad?”

“No. You have.” Ivan stood up and moved toward Hans. “Insanely reckless! Or was it deliberate?”

“What are you talking about?”

“What happened in Charleston yesterday?” Ivan demanded.

Hans gaped in confusion. “Charleston?”

“You pretend very well, comrade,” Sonya sniffed.

Hans pulled against the straps.

“Be still!” Ivan commanded. “Anyone else would already be in the river.”

But Hans kept struggling against the straps. “I don’t know about anything happening in Charleston.”

Ivan remained unimpressed. “No. You were not supposed to. It was not your affair. So I am wondering how you knew.”

Now Hans was angry. “If you keep talking in riddles, we’ll never get anywhere! Tell me what happened in Charleston! ” His assertive tone changed the course of the conversation. Ivan turned to look at Sonya, whose acrimonious expression now turned inquisitive.

Ivan brought a pensive forefinger to his lips as he seemed to gauge Hans’s sincerity. Then he lifted a briefcase from the floor and retrieved something from inside. “This was taken yesterday morning.”

The photograph Ivan shoved in Hans’s face made him blanch. Sweat trickled from his scalp as he stared at the clear and unmistakable image of
Cass
standing beneath a moss-draped tree with Liesl Bower. Hans’s mind spun like a roulette wheel waiting for the ball of reason to drop solidly into place. But there was no reason behind what he saw.

He looked up into Ivan’s seething face, at the eyes that watched him back, judging Hans’s reaction. But his astonishment was genuine.

“Your stepdaughter is what happened in Charleston yesterday,” Ivan said, bending over Hans as if he were an unruly child. “Somehow she knew Liesl Bower was marked for death. And somehow, she managed to prevent it. How did that happen?”

But that was just one of two questions pounding in Hans’s head that instant. Momentarily suspending his incredulity over Cass’s involvement, he looked Ivan steady in the eye. “You tried to kill that woman again?”

Ivan straightened and strolled confidently back to his chair, lowering himself onto it as though it were a throne. He gazed arrogantly at Hans. “How I choose to deal with my enemy is none of your business.”

“Liesl Bower is not your enemy! I was glad when that piano bomb didn’t go off!”

Sonya leaned forward in her chair. “Do you think a great power rises without spilling blood? That the assets of our enemies are off-limits to us?”

“She’s just a piano player!” Hans charged. “That’s not a wartime kill. It’s murder!”

Ivan jumped to his feet. “You should be shot for insubordination! You should be hanged for treason against Russia.” He moved menacingly toward Hans again. “What was Cass Rodino doing in Charleston?” he demanded. “And who were the men with her?”

Cass went to Charleston to save Liesl Bower? Impossible!
Hans refused to believe such a thing had happened. “If I didn’t know anything about this, how could she?”

“Then explain this photograph!”

“I can’t,” Hans replied emphatically. “Besides following me that night to your apartment, purely at the whim of her mother, she has absolutely no knowledge of our operation. No access to—”

The thought struck like lightning—
The beach house! The files in my study!
Had Cass gotten in? Why would she? Then he remembered their
conversation
in the diner and later in the park. Had his warnings only ignited her curiosity, and the inauguration attack fueled it? Yes, it was beginning to make sense.

He caught himself too late. He’d waited too long to finish his sentence.

“You know something more,” Ivan prodded. “Tell me!”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what we know,” Sonya said, her words slithering through tight lips as she stood up. “Your girl got into something of yours that led her to Liesl Bower. Perhaps she knows about the court bombing, too. Your files, a carelessly placed note to yourself, something. Whatever she has, we’ll find it before it reaches the wrong people.” She bent to look Hans in the eye. “We just missed her last night, but we will find her again.” She taunted him with obvious pleasure.

Hans didn’t disappoint her. He lunged against the restraints. “If you hurt that girl, I’ll—”

“You will do nothing!” Ivan’s voice boomed. “You are now powerless. Sonya will take over your duties as overseer. We will find your stepdaughter and end her threat to us.”

Hans lurched forward, almost upending the chair.

“It is a pity our man in Charleston could not take care of her and Liesl Bower at the same time,” Ivan droned on as though for his own amusement. “Andreyev and Fedorovsky eagerly await news of Miss Bower’s death. And I must accommodate my generals’ lust for revenge. It was she, you recall, who brought them down.” Ivan nodded toward Sonya.

“You will write two letters,” Sonya instructed with cold detachment. “One to your wife, telling her you are leaving her. Because of our generosity over the years, she will not want for anything except, maybe, her husband. Then again, perhaps she has already tired of you.” Her lips curled with satisfaction. “The other letter goes to your employer, announcing your immediate resignation.”

Hans’s chest grew tight, and he dug his fingernails into his palms.

“We will return your car to the garage,” Sonya continued. “We want no meddling from the police should it be found abandoned at the dock. And then, you’ll remain our guest until we see fit to dispose of
you
permanently.” She shook her head. “We simply cannot tolerate your carelessness.”

Ivan looked regretfully at Hans. “You would have enjoyed living in Russia. In just days, our American comrades will complete the tasks they have trained long and hard for, then immediately escape. You would have received a hero’s welcome.” He motioned for Sonya to join him as he moved toward the doorway.

She left the room, but Ivan paused and looked back at Hans. “You would have enjoyed the irony of what I am about to do. And who I am.”

The van waited in the dark, snugged against the side of a warehouse within sight of the dock. Evgeny and Ava had watched Hans park his Mercedes and wait at the end of the dock. Soon, an old commercial trawler approached and a young man stepped from inside and secured the boat to the dock. Hans Kluen boarded promptly, and within minutes the boat pulled away.