Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(87)

She never got far. Dad had kept her isolated, way out there on the endless Wyoming grasslands, so she had no friends. She did not drive. Her English had been close to nonexistent. She’d had no money. She’d always looked so defeated when Dad brought her back. It made Nick feel guilty for being so pathetically grateful that Dad had caught her.

Until the cancer had put her permanently out of Dad’s reach when Nick was twelve.

He still remembered holding her hand, the look of dumb relief on her face as she finally slipped away from the relentless pain of her illness. And the stress of enduring Anton Warbitsky. A state which could be classified as a chronic illness in and of itself. He should know.

She had died whispering Nick’s pet names. Kolya. Kolyuchka.

His stomach hurt, a hollow, awful ache. He’d spent his life trying to run away from this feeling, and here it was, large as life, bad as ever.

Aw, f*ck this. Now was not the time to rake up old, harrowing memories. He had enough to feel like hell about here and now.

He programmed his phone to alert him the second Becca turned her phone back on. She had to pull this shit while he was chained to a goddamn chair, watching Milla and Pavel? He couldn’t even follow her.

He was rattled, scared. And sad. Feeling sad made him angry. He was going to be interested to know exactly why Becca had lied to him.

In fact, he could not f*cking wait for that explanation.



Becca speeded after Diana’s receding taillights on the northbound interstate, wondering nervously just how dangerous this wacky impulse to tail Mathes’s mistress actually was.

She was comforted by the sense that Diana was at least as inexperienced at this sort of thing as Becca herself, judging from all the whining and sniveling in Marla’s office. Chances were, she wouldn’t be on the alert for someone following her. At least, so Becca hoped.

Asphalt rushed beneath her wheels. Her eyes watered with the strain of keeping Diana’s taillights constantly in sight. Every time they disappeared around a curve, she panicked until she found them again. Sped up to check the make, color, plates of the car, so she could drop back again and breathe, more or less. And drive.

She must be nuts. She should give this information to Nick. He was trained to deal with it. She herself, on the other hand, was trained to plan memorable menus. She knew six great recipes for stuffed mushrooms. She was the queen of artichoke dip. She could serve wine without dripping a single drop. She knew where to find great deals on table linens. What was she doing on the road, following a criminal?

Maybe it was because she’d been fired. Her full-time job now was to do everything possible to get out of this nightmare trap she was in, because until she did, she had no hope of anything even resembling a normal life. And besides, she believed in fate. The opportunity to follow the woman had presented itself like a flashing neon arrow. It wasn’t like she could freeze frame, call Nick, pass the job off to someone else who was more qualified for it. It was her or nobody, now or never. She would have to have been a gutless wimp not to jump on it.

Problem was, she felt alarmingly like a gutless wimp. Was that a true instinct she’d followed when she ran down the hall after Diana? Or just a random electrical impulse from the depths of her frazzled brain? Crossed wires, blown circuits—how could she tell?

She tried to talk herself down. After all, she was following a woman who didn’t have a whole lot of backbone, judging from the way Mathes had bullied her. Becca wouldn’t have had the nerve to follow one of Zhoglo’s gun-toting goons, but Diana was another matter. From the sound of that conversation, Diana was some sort of health professional, not a career criminal. Not armed. As clueless about this kind of thing as herself, Becca hoped.

Hell, if it came down to a physical confrontation, God forbid, Becca might even be able to hold her own in a catfight, if the weapons were swung purses, fake nails, insults, bitchslaps.

However, the chances were good that Diana was heading off to meet people associated with Zhoglo. And while Diana might be incompetent as a criminal, Zhoglo’s people were most definitely not.

And whatever unknown thing Diana was driving off to do both frightened and horrified her. Blood. Tissue typing.

Becca shuddered with a renewed thrill of fear. God, she wished Nick were with her. She wanted to call him, to tell him what she now knew: Mathes’s name, Diana’s license plate number, the cryptic conversation she had overheard in Marla’s office. But by the time it had occurred to her to call him, she was out of area.

She squirmed, uncomfortably. He needed that information, but she couldn’t stop at a pay phone to give it to him without losing Diana. Besides. She was dead sure, to the marrow of her bones, that Nick would not approve of what she was doing right now.

Hah. Talk about an understatement. His head would explode.

At least he had no clue where she was. For all Nick knew, she was still racing around at the club, working the banquet. She had until midnight before he started to worry and stew. Two and a half hours. She’d go a bit farther, and with luck, Diana would do whatever dreadful thing Mathes had ordered her to do quickly enough so that Becca could witness it and get back to Seattle in time for her date with Nick. Yeah. Right. That sounded real probable.

They were almost to a nothing special, could-be-anywhere rural area called Kimble when Diana’s black PT Cruiser started to signal. She pulled off onto a long strip mall, went a couple of miles, and signaled again right before a Days Inn.