Strangers When We Meet Page 8

  “I told you where I was going before I left,” she reminded him icily. “You raised no objection.”

  “You told me you would be back by nightfall.”

  “The accident left us without a vehicle.”

  “This accident occurred yesterday morning. You had plenty of time to arrange transportation back to the base, had you wished to.”

  She had no answer for that. Bugarin pressed his point home with a vicious thrust.

  “Hamilton must have been quite persuasive, to keep you the whole night at his house. What secrets did you tell him, Larissa Petrovna, while he rode you?”

  “I will say this again, just once. He did not ride me. Nor did I tell him secrets.”

  Vodka may have slowed his thought processes, but Aleksei had served too long with the FSB for drink to dull his instincts.

  Larissa’s glance didn’t waver. Scorn still sharpened her voice. Yet he knew at once she’d lied. Or perhaps withheld a part of the truth. The two were the same in his mind.

  “But you told him something,” he murmured with a satisfied smile. “Something you must now tell me.”

  “Yes.”

  A feral excitement curled in his belly. It was like sex, this sudden jolt he got whenever he uncovered that which others wanted to keep hidden. The intensity of it burned the fumes from his brain and restored his heady sense of power.

  He could have laughed at the look on her face. She detested him, and must now open herself to him. Depending on what she revealed, he might well be able to use it to force her to open in other ways, too.

  His groin tightened in delighted anticipation. He could see her, flat on her back, those slender white thighs spread wide. He would make her lie there, just lie there, unmoving, while he played with her. Then he would roll her over, put her on her knees and take her like the bitch that she was.

  Bugarin’s triumph showed clearly on his face, sickening Lara. He would wield the club she was about to hand him with glee. She knew it as well as she knew her own child’s cry in the night.

  A craven impulse to keep silent raced through her. What if she didn’t tell Bugarin about the voice? What if she just put it out of her head, forced the memories back to the darkest recesses of her being, where they had hidden until a week ago?

  No! She could not do that to Yuri. To herself.

  She slanted another look at the FSB officer’s red, wet lips. A shudder rippled down her spine. Slowly, from the wasteland of her heart, she dragged out the truth.

  “The day we arrived here, I heard a man speaking with an odd voice. One I have heard before, in Moscow.”

  Whatever Bugarin had expected, it obviously wasn’t that. He stared at her stupidly. “What man? Who is he?”

  “I don’t know. His was just one voice in a crowd of many who passed by. By the time I recovered from my shock, he was gone.”

  Frowning, the FSB officer struggled to sort through her tale. “What was so odd about this voice?”

  “It is most distinctive. Deep, like a frog’s, and rasping.” Her chest tightened. “It was also the voice I heard just before the fire at my apartment building six years ago.”

  “What fire? Ah!” His gaze sharpened, slid to her throat. “The one that killed your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  With a callousness that took her breath away, he shrugged aside the horror of Yuri’s death. That was her nightmare, not his. His only interest lay in the puzzle she’d just presented him.

  “What was he doing in your apartment building, this mysterious speaker?”

  “Arguing with the woman who lived next door. I heard only a few words when I passed by her door. He called her a whore. She laughed, then cried out to him to not be so rough, not to hurt her.”

  “She screamed?”

  “No, there was no scream.”

  Only the one small cry. Not frightened, really. No touch of panic, or Lara would have stopped and pounded on the door. She’d paused, listened for a moment, then gone on her way. A lover’s spat, she remembered thinking.

  Bugarin came to much the same conclusion. His lip curled in a sadistic smile.

  “She must have liked it, then, the rough way he used her.”

  He contemplated the scene Lara had evoked in his dirty little mind for so long, she had to bite the inside of her lip to hide her revulsion.

  “She was Russian, this woman?”

  “Yes. I did not know her well. She’d moved in only the week before. She died that night.”

  “In the fire?”

  “Yes.”

  She would not tremble, would not let her voice quaver. At the first sign of weakness, he would pounce on her like a vulture on a rotting carcass.

  “How am I to understand this?” he demanded caustically. “You heard a voice six years ago, but you don’t know whose. You think you heard it again last week, but didn’t bother to report the matter to me.”

  “I’m reporting it now.”

  “You’re a bit late, Larissa Petrovna.”

  She endured the sneer, realizing he didn’t know what to make of the information she’d just given him any more than she did.

  “I’ll send a query to my department head,” he said finally. “Perhaps we have a file on someone with a voice like a frog’s, or on this woman who lived next door to you. Give me her name.”

  “Elena Dimitri.”

  He jotted down the few pitiful details Lara could provide. She’d only seen the woman once or twice, in the hallway. Young and quite attractive, she’d smiled cheerfully in passing but kept to herself. A week after moving in she was dead, her body burned beyond recognition.

  Like Yuri’s.

  The door slammed behind Bugarin a few moments later. Blindly, Lara crossed her arms and stared at the rain painting the window in shades of gray. One hand reached up to tremble against the side of her throat.

  She had no idea how long she stood there before she noticed the odd pattern of the rain rivulets.

  Across the parking lot, Dodge paced the confines of his living room. The gray skies and icy drizzle had him feeling caged and restless and totally frustrated.

  Aw, hell! Who was he kidding? It wasn’t the weather that had him tied up in knots. It was a certain blue-eyed major.

  He was damned if he could rationalize kissing her. Not once, but twice. He knew how dangerous it was to mix business with pleasure. Especially in his kind of business.

  He’d also been burned once, badly. True, he’d been young and stupid enough to confuse lust with love. Also true, he’d refused to recognize the signs that she’d tired of him until he came home to find her gone. He’d done a damned good job since that humiliating experience of keeping his relationships with women loose and easy.

  Not that he could claim anything resembling a relationship with Lara Petrovna. In addition to the fact that she was a Russian and a missile officer and his target, she was as prickly as a cactus. Yet her barriers had slipped enough for him to glimpse the woman behind them, and she pulled at him like none other had in longer than he could remember.

  So now he’d opened a door he was finding damned hard to shut. Added to that, this business with Hank Barlow was eating into his gut. Almost as much as being sideswiped by a stolen SUV. From all appearances, the two incidents were unrelated but Dodge couldn’t shake the suspicion they fit in some way. He was still trying to jam the pieces of the puzzle together when the phone in his quarters rang some hours later.

  “Hamilton.”

  “This is Sergeant Rafferty at the wing command post, sir. Colonel Yarboro wants you to report to Major Petrovna’s quarters immediately.”

  Dodge’s glance whipped to the window. Although the rain had fogged the panes, he could see her building clearly. See, too, the vehicle that came screeching to a halt just outside it. Paul Handerhand of the OSI jumped out, while another vehicle with the distinct markings of the security forces pulled up behind Handerhand’s.

  Dodge’s gut twisted. The sudden, all-consuming fe
ar that something had happened to Lara had him slamming the phone down and racing for the door.

  The wing commander’s white-topped vehicle arrived as Dodge sprinted across the parking lot. Colonel Yarboro emerged, wearing jeans, a leather jacket and a look that signaled imminent danger to life and limb for anyone who crossed him. Tom Jordan, the wing’s START officer, scrambled from the passenger seat.

  “Aleksei Bugarin has filed an official protest,” Yarboro announced without preamble.

  The terse announcement brought a low hiss from Special Agent Handerhand. Dodge barely managed to smother a curse.

  Christ! Had Bugarin seen him corner Lara in the hall? Or had she felt obligated to report the kisses Dodge had laid on her? He couldn’t bring himself to believe that, but he squared his shoulders and prepared to admit that he’d had his hands all over her.

  He didn’t get the chance. Yarboro continued in a tone as cold and cutting as the drizzle. “Bugarin sent the protest to the Russian Embassy. From there, it went to Moscow and came back to the U.S. through diplomatic channels to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. DTRA passed it to the Department of Defense. I just received it.”

  The colonel’s flinty gaze cut from Dodge to Handerhand and back again.

  “We stand accused of violating section two-seven-B of the inspection protocol.”

  Dodge didn’t even try to pretend he knew the reference. “By doing what, sir?”

  “By installing an unauthorized listening device in Major Petrovna’s quarters.”

  Chapter 8

  “A bug?” Dodge echoed grimly. “You’re saying someone planted a bug in Lara’s room?”

  “I’m not,” Yarboro snapped, “the Russians are.” Making no effort to hide his extreme displeasure at this turn of events, he turned to the treaty-compliance officer. “Tom, you want to let them know we’re here, so they can show us this device?”

  Jordan didn’t have to let them know. Bugarin must have been watching for Yarboro’s arrival. The FSB officer bustled out of the building with his collar turned up against the drizzle. Lara exited a few steps behind him. Her face was ashen, and she met Dodge’s look with an icy one of her own.

  He got the message. The listening device—if there was one—had violated more than treaty protocol. It had shattered whatever fragile trust Lara might have had in him or in any Americans.

  “It is here.”

  Huffing, Bugarin led the way not into the building, but alongside it. He counted the windows, stopped out side Lara’s and stepped over the boxwoods planted beneath. Mulch squished under his boots as he pointed to the upper windowpane.

  “There.”

  Even with Bugarin pointing directly at it, the flat dime-size device was almost impossible to see. It was made of a clear, hair-thin plastic. The tiny fiber inside had a transparent coating. Dodge suspected the device never would have been discovered if not for the rivulets of rain curving delicately around its outer edges.

  “I have scanned it with my equipment,” Bugarin informed them. “It is most definitely a listening device, and as such, a violation of the treaty protocol. I must demand to know when it was placed and by whom, so I may include that information in the report I send to my superiors.”

  “I want to know a few things myself.” Yarboro’s low, lethal reply made the FSB officer back up a step and shed some of his self-righteous indignation. “Is this the only device you’ve found?”

  “Da.”

  “No others, in any of the rest of the rooms?”

  “Nyet.”

  “Then you won’t object if I have my people do a double check.” The colonel swung to his OSI detachment commander. “I want the best you’ve got on this, Handerhand. Have them scan every window, every exterior door, every crack in the wall.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel threw another glance at the rain-soaked window, blew out a disgusted breath and crooked a finger.

  “Come with me, Hamilton.”

  Dodge followed him to his staff car and braced for what he knew was coming. Sure enough, Yarboro waited only to make sure they were out of hearing before letting loose with both barrels.

  “I’d better not learn you and that hush-hush outfit you work for in D.C. are behind this.”

  “We’re not, sir.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then who the hell is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Yaroboro’s eyes narrowed to slits. “But you’ve got a theory?”

  “More of a hunch than a theory.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “I’m thinking that little bit of plastic is how the driver of a black SUV knew Major Petrovna and I would be cruising a deserted stretch of I-25 yesterday morning.”

  Dodge felt a sudden kick low in his belly as several of the pieces of the puzzle he’d been trying to force-fit suddenly came together.

  “I’m also thinking the bug might not have anything to do with the START treaty and a whole lot to do with Lara. I need to check the date of the fire that killed her husband, sir. I also need to have our people analyze the components of the device. I’ll get with Handerhand and have it couriered to the wizard who heads OMEGA’s electronics division. I’m betting it’ll take her and her folks all of five minutes to tell us if any of its components were designed or manufactured by E-Systems’ Communications Division.”

  “Hell! You think Hank Barlow’s behind this?”

  “It’s still conjecture at this point.”

  Conjecture, maybe, but backed by gut instinct. It was time he paid a personal visit to the CEO of E-Systems, Dodge decided. First, though, he needed to set things straight with Lara.

  He strode back to where she stood a little way apart from her FSB counterpart, who was observing and documenting the removal of the bug. Shoulders hunched against the cold, she knifed Dodge with a look that could have bent steel, then turned her attention back to the others.

  “We didn’t plant that device.”

  “We?” She gave a huff of scorn. “You speak for your entire government, then?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You, a mere major?”

  This wasn’t the time to tell her that he worked for an agency other than the Department of Defense.

  “Listen, Lara, I can’t prove it—yet—but this bug may trace back to Hank Barlow.”

  He watched closely for a reaction. A flicker of her eyes, maybe. Or a slight flare of her nostrils. But she gave no indication the name meant anything to her.

  “Who is this Barlow?”

  “The man whose voice you heard here…and in Moscow the night your husband died.”

  There was no denying the reaction this time. Shock drained what little color the cold hadn’t already taken. The puckered scars stretched tight across the underside of her jaw.

  Something pulled inside Dodge, sharp and hard, like a muscle cramp in his chest. He ached to kiss that tortured skin, to stroke her cheek and throat until her eyes burned with another sort of fever. Instead, he steeled himself against the horror he’d evoked.

  “You know who he is?” she whispered.

  “Yes. But I don’t know what really happened the night of the fire. You need to tell me, Lara. You need to trust me.”

  Her glance whipped to the FSB officer. She was caught between them, Dodge knew. Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.

  “I cannot…”

  “You have to,” he countered brutally. “Otherwise the inspection gets scrubbed, you and your team go home, a treaty that’s taken a decade to push through falls apart and both our countries go back to pointing an unlimited number of missiles at each other’s throat.”

  Her back stiffened. Her chin came up. As Dodge had anticipated, the officer in Lara Petrovna wouldn’t allow the woman to jeopardize her mission.

  “I must speak with Bugarin, tell him what you know and get his permission to, how do you say? Pump you for more information.”

&n
bsp; Her inflection didn’t change. Nor did her tight expression. But Dodge didn’t miss the distaste that flickered in her eyes for the cat-and-mouse game they were both forced to play.

  “I will come to your quarters later,” she told him stiffly. “When the business here is finished.”

  Finishing it took some time. Since the device was discovered on a U.S. base, the military took charge of it. Bugarin insisted on photographing and documenting its removal, then peered over the shoulders of the OSI counterintelligence techs who swept the quarters of the other Russian team members. Dodge used the interval to contact Blade and arrange immediate transport of the wafer-thin disk peeled off Lara’s window to OMEGA headquarters.

  “Mac’s gonna love this,” Blade commented.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Mac, aka Mackenzie Blair Jensen, had served as OMEGA’s guru of all things electronic for years. After the birth of her twins, she’d assumed more of a consultant role. Nick Jensen had already announced that he intended to do the same after the next presidential election. Dodge was profoundly glad both Lightning and his genius of a wife were still available for this one, though.

  “Tell Mac that I need her analysis ASAP,” he advised Blade. “My gut says this train’s moving down some fast tracks.”

  “Roger that.”

  He had the device on an air-force jet and en route to Washington in less than a half hour. Then he returned to his quarters to wait for Lara.

  Dodge had mastered the fine art of patience over the years. First as a kid, when his dad had taught him and Sam to hunt game with slow stealth. Then as a teen, when he’d learned to wait precious seconds for an open receiver instead of recklessly lobbing a football downfield. Again and again as an adult, both in the military and in his missions for OMEGA. Stalking human prey took even more tenacity and patience.

  So he had no excuse for his reaction when Lara rapped on his door an hour later. He closed it behind her, hooked her elbow and spun her into his arms. No excuse, that is, other than her pallor and the bruised, haunted look in her eyes.

  That disappeared fast enough when she flashed him a look of utter disbelief. “Are you mad!”