“He’s not a killer,” I said. “He’s my fiancé.”
Maks’s eyes were large with surprise. “You and Rick are engaged?”
“No,” I told him, handing Dutch the gun lest my next bit of news require him to use it to control Grinkov. “And this isn’t Rick Des Vries, Maks.”
Maks’s gaze went back and forth between us, and I knew he was struggling to understand. “Meet Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dutch Rivers of the United States FBI,” I said, watching his reaction closely.
Maks surprised me when he stepped back and visibly relaxed. “Oh, thank God,” he said. “I was worried the disk would fall into the wrong hands tonight.”
It was our turn to look surprised. “Wait, what?”
Maks smiled. “You’re not the only ones playing for the good guys,” he said. “I was recruited by the CSIS ten years ago to run countersurveillance on organized crime here in Canada.”
“
You’re
a spy?” I gasped.
Maks actually laughed. “Yes, Abigail, or is your name perhaps something more exotic?”
I shook my head. “No. It’s Abigail. Although everyone calls me Abby.”
Maks smiled. Reaching out to take my hand, he lifted it to his lips and kissed it. “Well then, thank you, Abby, for saving my life earlier. That would have been a most excruciating death had you not given me the antidote in time.”
Dutch snaked a protective arm around my middle, pulling me out of Maks’s grip, and held me close while he pushed the tip of the gun into Maks’s chest. “As interested in this little tea party as I am, Grinkov, I think we need to get the hell out of here.”
Maks sneered at Dutch. It was clear these two weren’t going to get together for hockey night if we ever made it out of here. “I’ve sent Eddington on ahead to the plane,” he said. “He’s gone to alert my pilot. We should make our way to the airstrip.”
I tried to orient our position in relation to the airstrip. It had to be at least three miles through thick forest. In my current getup I’d never make it. I looked down at my feet, cursing my choice of foot attire for the hundredth time, and Dutch seemed to notice my predicament.
“Wait here,” he said, handing me the gun and glaring meaningfully at Maks as if to say, “She knows how to use that,” before leaving the shack.
He was back just a minute or two later with a pair of boots and a fatigue jacket. “Where’d you get that?” I asked.
Dutch stepped over the dead soldier on the floor. “The other guy was small,” he said, handing me the jacket and boots.
I made a face but quickly donned the jacket and peeled my swollen and blistered feet out of the pumps, shoving them into the boots. They were several sizes too big, but I’d make them work.
We then made sure no other soldiers were nearby and left the shack. Dutch had his map and the compass, and he used his penlight to help navigate us through the woods. While we trudged through the thick forest, something kept niggling at the edge of my thoughts.
“Maks?” I said finally when I couldn’t keep the bothersome thought to myself anymore.
“Yes?”
“Why did you attack me in the parking garage and steal my wallet?”
In front of me, Maks came to a halt. I stopped too and he turned to look at me. “I didn’t,” he said simply.
Dutch had come up short too. “What’re you talking about?” he asked me.
“I found my wallet and my stun gun in the pocket of Grinkov’s luggage,” I said. “That’s how I knew it’d been him who attacked me in the garage.”
“No,” Maks said, an odd look in his eyes. “As I told you the day you were attacked, we found you already unconscious. I did not strike you or take your personal items.”
“But I found them in your luggage,” I insisted. I was totally confused, so I focused on his energy, and sure enough I could see he was being somewhat truthful, but there was that small hint of bluff in his answer, which caused me not to completely trust him.
I looked to Dutch to gauge his reaction. He had his poker face up, but I could tell he was alarmed and the air had suddenly filled with tension. “Did you know that Abby was nearly strangled to death in Des Vries’s offices?” he asked Maks.
Maks’s expression turned from veiled to angry. “When?”
“The day you met with Dutch and Boklovich and insisted that I not come along,” I said.
“Which left her vulnerable and alone at Des Vries’s office,” Dutch said, his eyes narrowing while he looked at Maks with renewed scrutiny.
Grinkov’s posture stiffened. “I’ve been doing nothing but trying to keep her safe, Agent Rivers. Why would I wish her dead?”
“Good question,” Dutch said, the muzzle of the gun back up and trained right at Maks. “And one I’d like answered when we land back in Toronto. For now, how about you walk right in front of me, huh, Maks?”
Something unreadable passed between the two men. Finally, however, Maks moved up closer to Dutch, but not before volunteering his knife, and that one gesture really bothered me. I mean, why would a guy that meant to do me harm give up a weapon I was sure Dutch didn’t know he had in the first place?
Something else that bothered me was that the thief who’d stolen the drone and Intuit had clearly been at the party—the darts were evidence of that—but I still had no idea who it’d been and I felt like after all of that, we’d partly failed in our mission.
We walked on in silence for the duration of our march, and by the time we emerged from the forest at the far end of the landing strip, my legs were covered in scratches and my feet were stinging fiercely from walking sockless in boots that were way too big for me.
Still, I had on the jacket and the boots were better than the pumps, so I figured we had only one more big obstacle to overcome—getting to the plane and off the ground without incident—and we’d be home free.
As long as Dutch kept that gun trained on Maks, I knew he’d be forced to take us somewhere safe, like Victoria or Vancouver.
And I could have wept with relief when I spotted Maks’s plane amid a short row of other small jets, but just as quickly my heart sank when I took in the military vehicle parked in the middle of the runway. The three of us crept close to the edge of the field to take a better look, and saw three men positioned at the top of the jeep manning a very big gun pointed right at the planes.
The message was clear—no one was getting off the ground without a fight.
And that presented Dutch and me with another terrible dilemma: He wouldn’t be able to take on all three soldiers and their guns by himself, and I certainly wasn’t in much of a position to help him. I mean, I now knew how to handle a gun, but I wasn’t the best at killing people, as my time in the shack when the soldier had entered had already proved.
We needed Maks’s help, and to get it, we’d have to trust him. Dutch sighed heavily and turned to me. “Your call, Edgar.”
I knew exactly what he was thinking. I checked my radar and it suggested we’d face some sort of danger once we gained the plane. There was treachery in the ether, I was sure of it. The only other option was to turn tail and make our way back through the wilderness to the other airstrip, where we could alert the CIA that we’d been compromised, but that was nearly all the way on the other side of the island, and it was getting dark out and still raining a little.
I could feel these two choices weighing heavily on me and neither seemed good, but since we were already here at this airstrip with an awaiting plane, I decided to go with the easier choice.
So I turned to Maks and laid it all out on the table. “There’s something you should know,” I told him to get his attention away from the soldiers.
He seemed to know we’d be asking him for help, and when he turned to look at me, he seemed quite amused. “And that is?”
I reached over and placed a hand on Dutch’s arm. “I’m hoping to marry this man in the next year or so, Maks. I love him more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my whole life, and if I leave this earth before I get to say ‘I do,’ my ghost will haunt you to the ends of the earth and I will not rest until I’ve driven you completely insane.”
Maks’s gaze never left mine and there was a mixture of emotions behind those eyes. “I know what it means to lose your true love, Abigail,” he said finally, and I understood that he was referring to his late wife. “You may not trust me, but you need me. Together we can leave here. Apart we’ll never make it out alive.”
I nodded and motioned to Dutch. “Give him back his knife.”
Reluctantly, Dutch handed Grinkov back his weapon.
“Now give him the assault rifle,” I said.
Dutch hesitated.
“Don’t trust
him
,” I implored. “Trust
me
.”
With even more reluctance Dutch handed over the big weapon. “Now,” I said, wriggling out of the jacket and lifting Maks’s knife out of his hand, “what we need is a distraction.” I then shucked the boots, removed my stun gun from the inside of my dress, and made a very large tear in the front of the dress with the knife. Handing the dagger back to Maks, I stepped out onto the muddy runway.
“Abby!” I heard Dutch whisper harshly. “Get the hell back here!”
I ignored him and trotted down the length of the field. The soldiers all had their backs to me, so I was able to get quite close to them before one of them spotted me. He shouted an alarm and the guns all swiveled to aim directly at me.
I swayed on my feet dramatically and began to wail, tugging at the tear in the top of my dress to expose as much cleavage as possible. “Help me!” I begged them. “Please! I’ve been attacked and I need help!”
The three of them eyed one another silently, and I knew they were wondering if they should shoot me or come down to investigate.
“I’m hurt!” I told them, and pulled at the dress even more. “Right here!” I added, pointing to one boob. And then I dropped to the ground in what I hoped was a believable faint, curling the stun gun into my left hand just underneath my torso.
The soldiers argued for a moment or two until one of them got down and approached me cautiously. I held perfectly still.
He said something I didn’t understand as he got close, so I moaned and moved a little to show him I wasn’t a threat . . . just hurt and harmless. He came close enough to hover over me and poke my hip with his boot.
The other men called to him, and he turned to reply. I used the moment to roll over and kick him in the nuts as hard as I could.
The soldier sank to his knees, clutching his groin, and I sat straight up and shocked him in the side of his neck while gunfire flew out from the surrounding foliage nearby.
By the time my stun gun ran out of juice, my target was unconscious and twitching.
Someone stepped close. “Good job, Edgar.”
I looked up and grinned like I’d just received a gold star. “Thanks, cowboy.”
The roar of an engine caught my attention, and I saw that Grinkov was behind the wheel of the jeep, moving it and its two dead occupants off the landing strip. Dutch dropped my borrowed jacket next to me with the boots. “Here,” he said, before bending down to drag my guy off the field too.
“Don’t kill him!” I told him firmly. He looked disappointed, but he didn’t argue and he didn’t put a bullet in the guy either, so I relaxed.
Maks got out and waved us to the plane. We ran quickly down the field only to fling ourselves back into the tall grass at the edge when one of the planes came roaring down the runway straight for us.
Dutch helped me to my feet after it’d whizzed by and lifted off. “There’ll be a mad rush outta here now that the runway’s clear.”
We kept to the tall grass and made our way down to Grinkov’s plane, which was third in line to take off.
Eddington opened the door and Dutch lifted me up. I smiled at him. “You made it out!”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, helping me while I scrambled through the door. “It was a bit tricky, but Mr. Grinkov managed to bribe a guard who allowed me the use of his jeep.”
Dutch and Grinkov both made it aboard too and Maks wasted no time hurrying to the front of the plane and shouting through the cabin door, “Take us out of here, Bruce!”
“Get everybody strapped in!” the captain shouted.
I hustled over to a seat and clipped my seat belt. Dutch landed next to me, setting down the small black box that held Intuit while he secured his own belt. Meanwhile, Maks helped a trembling Eddington with the door and then motioned for him to sit down.
The plane jolted forward and my head knocked painfully against the side of the wall. Maks’s poor butler hadn’t yet reached his seat at the back of the plane and went tumbling head over heels right in front of me.
“Mr. Eddington!” I cried, trying to steady him as the plane bumped and jostled along.
He tried to get up and fell right over again, so I latched on to his leg and ordered him to hold still. “Just wait until we’re in the air!” I commanded. “And hold on to anything you can!”
The butler reached for one of the table legs, which was bolted in place, and we bounced and jostled all the way down the rough terrain. “Come on, come on, come on!” I prayed, willing the plane to lift off.
Eddington’s legs were trembling under my hand and I moved my grip to his ankle to hold him steady as we finally, blissfully began to lift into the air. I almost cheered, but something caught my eye and I let go of Eddington’s ankle abruptly, all my senses alert and alarmed.
The butler hardly noticed; he was so busy getting to his feet and struggling to his seat at the back of the plane, limping as he went without his walking stick.
I felt Dutch’s eyes on me. “You okay?”
I turned in my chair away from Eddington. “Look at his shoes!” I told him, discreetly pointing behind me.
Dutch gave me a quizzical look, but when he eyed Eddington’s shoes, he seemed to understand exactly what I was getting at.
“I’ll kill him,” Dutch said, ready to confront the butler about the brand-new shoelace on his right shoe, while the well-worn lace on the other exactly matched the one left next to me on the day I was nearly strangled to death.