72 Hours Read online

  Alex felt a chill spread through his body. “Are you implying I’d sacrifice my son to fulfill a contract?”

  “I know what you’d sacrifice to fulfill a contract. Do you want to see the scar?”

  He tried to remind himself she was emotionally distraught. He told himself they’d be hashing it all out when the mission was over and Danny was safe. But it wasn’t working. He was going to strangle her well before the mission was over.

  “You wanna do this now? In the bedroom.” She started to speak, but he shook his head. “Get your ass in the bedroom or I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you there.”

  * * *

  Grace walked into the bedroom with as much dignity as she could muster, but she was trembling with rage and indignation. And fear. Not fear of Alex, but the breath-stealing fear for her son that was now her constant companion.

  The arrogant son of a bitch could say whatever he wanted, but she wasn’t letting them give back the biotoxin until Danny was safe. He’d poured himself a drink to carry in with him, and she sat on the edge of the bed and watched him sip from it. She wasn’t going to open the conversation. If he wanted to talk, he could damn well talk.

  “How could you keep my son from me?”

  It wasn’t the question she’d expected, but fine. If he wanted to do this now, then they’d do it. “Do you know when I found out I was pregnant?”

  “How would I, since I didn’t know you were pregnant?”

  “They did a screening before I went in for surgery in the hospital. I learned I was carrying your child while being treated for the gunshot wound you gave me.”

  “I pay for that by never knowing I have a son?”

  Grace thought of the seconds before Alex’s bullet tore through her shoulder—the way his eyes went so flat and cold. He had been ready to do whatever it took to attain his objective.

  Alex knocked back the last of his drink. “I would have explained myself if you hadn’t transferred to a different hospital without telling anybody where you went.”

  “What’s to explain? You wanted Ricardo Escobar dead, and you were willing to sacrifice me to kill him.”

  The blood drained from Alex’s face, and she got a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “Is that what you believe?” he demanded. “Have you truly believed that all these years? You think I would kill you just to take out a second-rate criminal?”

  “I…” She looked down at the carpet. Now, seeing his face, she was too ashamed to admit it.

  “So you think I can’t be a father because I’m a heartless bastard willing to sacrifice my loved ones for my job?”

  Loved ones. She swallowed hard and tried to shove the words away. It was just a handy phrase.

  “Do you want to hear the truth?” he asked, “or do you prefer to cling to your hate and misperceptions?”

  “Misperceptions?” Her voice rose, but it was either yell or slap him upside the head. “What exactly is there to misperceive? Escobar was standing behind me, using me as a shield, and you shot through me to get to him.”

  “And the knife, Grace?” Alex asked in a deceptively calm voice.

  Knife? She didn’t remember a knife. She remembered guns. Threats shouted in English, Italian, and Spanish. Smoke. The acrid scent of Ricardo’s fear. But no knife.

  “Yes, there was a knife,” he said, no doubt reading her face—something he’d always done better than she liked. “A very wicked-looking hunting knife. He was preparing to stick it in the area of your kidney. You were expecting to be shot, and he wanted me to see your face when the knife slid into your vital organs. I watched his eyes, Grace, and you were about to die. That shot was the only way I could stop him from killing you.”

  “I…didn’t know.” It was lame, but the only thing she could think to say.

  “It’s all slow-motion in my nightmares, Grace. As soon as I saw the knife he started to smile. And I couldn’t have told you all the thoughts that went through my mind at the time I made the decision to shoot through your shoulder into his heart. But now, late in the night, I can tell you all of them. Would you move? Were my hands shaking? The fire was getting hotter and I’d have to move you and what if you bled out while I was carrying you to the car? The only thing I knew for sure is that you were definitely going to die if I hesitated.”

  He stopped and swallowed hard. “God, Grace, I loved you.”

  She pulled her heels up onto the bed so she could wrap her arms around her legs, rest her forehead on her knees and sob. She’d never heard pain in his voice like that—never heard the ragged hurt when he spoke. And now she would never forget it.

  “When that job was over I was going home to get my mother’s ring. I planned to take you to Italy and ask you to be my wife. Instead I had to put a bullet in you, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to apologize to you for it. Don’t you ever throw that in my face again.”

  The door slammed a moment later, and Grace crumpled sideways on the bed. Her shoulders heaved and she pressed her face into the comforter to muffle her crying. Everything she’d been trying to hold in crashed down on her and it was a long time before she could roll onto her back and take a deep, shuddering breath.

  If she had only agreed to see him one time before disappearing from his life, they could have had this discussion while there was still chance. Or if she’d talked to Sean, maybe it would have made its way to Alex and…

  And nothing. Whether he had any other option but to shoot her or not, nothing changed the fact that his life was too dangerous for her son. The Devlin Group was the reason her son wasn’t safe at home right now, and when they found him, she and Danny were gone. She’d take him so far under her past would never catch up with them again.

  “Hey!”

  She jerked awake, stunned to find she’d fallen asleep. She heard Gallagher’s shout from the living room and flew off the bed. Only when she stumbled and had to grab the dresser to right herself did she realize she’d fallen asleep. For how long? She pulled up the hem of her T-shirt and swiped at her face as she ran to the door.

  “We got him,” Gallagher yelled. He had to mean Danny.

  Alex was already leaning over Gallagher’s shoulder and he didn’t look up when she stood behind beside him to peer at the screen.

  “You have satellite face recognition technology?” she asked.

  “You’ve been playing with the boys who answer to budget committees for too long, Grace.” Gallagher zoomed in, clicked, then repeated it. “I tracked the car from the airport to the boat to the island, then real-timed it. Is that our boy?”

  Her breath caught in her throat. It was. She leaned over and touched a finger to her little boy’s face on the screen. He’s alive. “When was this taken?”

  “Four and a half minutes ago. Your son should be finishing up in the outhouse right about now.”

  Grace stood upright and tried to take a deep breath, but it caught in her chest and she held the back of the chair to keep from hitting the floor. Danny was alive. Alive and unharmed. Tears coursed down her cheeks and she had to concentrate on every breath to keep from hyperventilating.

  The trembling robbed her muscles of strength, but she stayed on her feet. He was alive, and the people around her right now were the best in the business. They’d get him back.

  Her focus sharpened as some of the maternal desperation eased in her chest. She embraced the single-mindedness that had always overtaken her before a mission. Time to put Mommy in the closet and kick some ass.

  “Zoom out,” she said. “What’s the situation?”

  “Island off the Keys. Pretty well uncharted, so to speak. A shack…some outbuildings. Trees. And at quick count, a dozen well-armed guards.”

  Alex folded his arms and watched Gallagher’s fingers flying over the keyboard. “Work your mission-planning magic, my friend.”

  “Get the other laptop fired up. I want topo and meteorological maps for a ten mile radius.”

  Grace gnawed at the side o
f her thumbnail, turning the scenario over and over in her mind. “There’s no way to get on that island without being made. They could…kill him before we can get to him.”

  “Remember that convo we had on the beach?” Gallagher asked without looking up.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Then let me work.”

  The clock seemed to count off endless minutes while Gallagher alternated between running through the computers and just staring at them, thinking. Occasionally he’d mutter something to himself or shake his head.

  “A black helo with active noise control,” he finally said.

  “A stealth helicopter?” Grace said, looking to Alex. “Can we get one of those?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. It’ll take a little time, though, to…for Devlin to pull the strings, and flight time.”

  Gallagher nodded. “We’ll still be well within the time limit. Grace, can you fly that bird?”

  “No. A Bell, yeah. Running a forty-million-dollar craft silent and dark by computer feed? No.”

  “Shit.” Gallagher pondered the problem for a minute before shaking his head. “Let me think for a minute. One of us has to stay with the biotoxin over there.”

  “I’m going in for Danny,” Grace snapped, just so everybody knew where she stood.

  All three agents tried to stare her down, but she held her ground. “I’m good. If I wasn’t good to go, I wouldn’t.”

  “I don’t like it,” Alex countered, and Grace wasn’t surprised. “You’re too emotional. Look how you botched taking me down.”

  That was dirty pool. “I didn’t know if my son was dead or alive then, and I doubt the guys on that island are going to distract me by dropping their pants.”

  “I don’t care. Let’s get Tony in here.”

  “Tony’s deep under,” Carmen reminded him. “Pulling blows eight months of work.”

  “Somebody else. Pull up the roster.”

  “Hold on.” Gallagher held up a hand.

  “No,” Alex snapped. “Hold nothing. She’s not active in this.”

  “Dude, you questioning my mission mojo?”

  Gallagher’s tone and posture were casual, but his eyes were fierce and Grace figured the best thing she could do was shut her mouth and let them have it out.

  “No,” Alex bit out. “But why don’t you tell me why we should take an emotional housewife on a high-risk mission to save a child’s life?”

  Grace’s fist shot out and hit him in the diaphragm. Alex doubled-over, gasping for breath. “That’s domestic engineer to you, asshole.”

  “Nothing wrong with her reflexes,” Carmen said, before fleeing to the bathroom to hide her laughter from her team leader.

  Grace didn’t speak Italian, but she knew the words Alex was muttering weren’t flattering. She didn’t care.

  Gallagher raised an eyebrow at her, and then looked back to Alex. “I’ll tell you why Grace should go. One—she’s still got it. She one-upped Rustikov, and if not for you guys having a history, she’d have taken you, too.”

  Alex snarled at him, but didn’t say anything. Grace felt heat climbing her neck. She still couldn’t believe she’d fallen for that.

  “And two,” Gallagher continued. “What we have here is a scared-shitless little boy. And even if the mission is flawless, it’s going to be terrifying for him, and he’ll fight us, Alex. He doesn’t know us, and we’ll be just more bad guys with guns. If he breaks and runs, then we’re freakin’ chasing him while they’re shooting at us, and it all goes to hell.”

  Grace nodded. She knew where he was going with this, and even Alex had stopped scowling quite so fiercely.

  Gallagher shrugged. “We bring Grace and we have total control of the kid. He sees his mom and he’ll be like duct tape on her, man.”

  Alex was staring at her, and Grace forced herself to look him straight in the eye. “You never doubted me in the field before, Alex.”

  “You’ve been out of the loop a while.”

  “I’ve kept up with my physical conditioning and put in time at the range while Danny was in school. And it’s still there. I can feel it, just like I did when Rustikov was in my kitchen. Am I at the top of my game? No. It’s been years since I’ve been in the field. But I’m still good and, like Gallagher said, I can control Danny.”

  Alex watched her. “Okay. You’re in. Now let’s map this out and get Danny back.”

  Chapter Five

  Grace bounced gently on the balls of her feet, clenching and unclenching her fists at her side. In brand-new khaki cargo pants and a tight-fitting, long-sleeved black T-shirt, with her favorite Nike crosstrainers on her feet, she was ready. To use a phrase from her youth, she was pumped.

  And the waiting sucked. They were at rest on the far side of a neighboring island, waiting for the go signal. Carmen was monitoring and feeding Gallagher live satellite feed, and some of the finest agents in the world were now on standby, waiting for her eight-year-old son to have to take a leak.

  The outhouse was a modern blue plastic job, and they’d watched the footage closely. When he went in, the indicator moved, showing he’d locked the door. Then the two guys guarding him would relax, wander away and share a smoke. That lock would hopefully buy them the few precious seconds they needed.

  She took a deep breath, rolling her shoulders, keeping her muscles warm and limber for the mission ahead. And yet again she visualized Gallagher’s plan, walking mentally through the steps necessary to safely remove their extraction target.

  And that’s what Danny was now. An extraction target. His picture was folded up in one of her pockets and the image of his scared eyes was seared across her heart. He was her baby, but now he was her mission.

  She felt the adrenaline building and closed her eyes, welcoming the flow through her bloodstream. It had always been her drug of choice and for years she’d been a junkie. Waiting for the juice, riding the high. Coming down, usually on the waves of a shattering orgasm as Alex took her against the wall or a door or whatever hard surface was handy in an adrenaline-fueled frenzy.

  But London had been her epiphany, motherhood her recovery program. Every day she denied herself that hit and buried the Grace she’d been just a little deeper inside.

  When another mom made noises about volunteering with the drug prevention program, Grace didn’t tell her she’d once shot a Columbian drug lord between the eyes from a distance the woman probably couldn’t even see. She let Danny hang Mission: Impossible posters in his room and pretend to be Tom Cruise without ever letting on she could have kicked that Ethan character’s ass.

  She’d hung up her action-adventure gun belt and strapped on an apron. It didn’t quite fit—in fact it chafed like hell—but it had seemed like the right outfit for the job.

  Now Grace let the rush come. It was better than chocolate. Better than a good sneeze. It was like the moments before an orgasm, when the brain and the body are screaming come on and let’s do this!

  She felt Alex’s gaze on her and turned, giving him a little smile and a saucy wink, just like she always had.

  “I’ve missed you, babe.”

  Not enough to come after me, she thought, but she simply put out her fist. He touched his to hers—part of their pre-mission ritual—and said, “Ready to ride this river?”

  “Yippe-ki-yea.”

  Alex gave her a crooked smile and went back to his own rituals, which always included humming the Stones, much to her annoyance.

  Nostalgia stung her for a second. Their pattern had been set after their first mission together. She had been untried in the field and he hadn’t wanted to take her, but the job had called for a female sidekick and she’d been the only one available.

  When the job was over and her natural instincts and excellent reflexes had saved his ass, he’d told her she’d do to ride the river with. It was a phrase straight from his favorite movie genre—old westerns—and she had responded with a favorite movie quote of her own. It stuck.

  With her blood already p
umping and her skin tingling from the rush, Grace couldn’t help but wonder just how true to form this job would run. Would Alex seek her out when it was time to come down? She hadn’t been a nun for the last eight years, but it had been a long time. Way too long.

  And nobody had ever rocked her world as completely as Alex Rossi had. As good as they were in the field together, their best work had always taken place in the bedroom. Or wherever else they happened to be.

  He was watching her again now, and she wondered if he was remembering their incredible stress-busting sex as well, or if he was still questioning her ability to see this through.