Page 23 of Smoke and Shadows

“So, I’m dead to whoever wanted to kill me?” Maia asked.

“For now. With Jack’s rescue, I’m sure they’re keeping an eye out at MDI and your apartment.”

“I’ve got Derek installing extra security cameras around the Trident building and my apartment. I’ve also got some of Taylor’s men on twenty-four-hour surveillance rotation,” Jack added.

Viktor nodded briefly in satisfaction.

“Tim added several layers of encryption to our agent NOC database,” Viktor added. “I have a feeling that’s what our enemies are after. They’ve also been targeting CIA.”

“What’s their end game?” Maia asked, concerned.

“No fucking clue,” Viktor replied. “Anything else you remember, Jack?”

Jack shook his head. “All they wanted were the codes.”

Someone’s phone buzzed. Marissa’s.

She looked up apologetically, stared at the number, frowned, and turned it off.

“I have to return a call. I’ll be back.”

Viktor’s nape prickled, but he shrugged it off. He was being paranoid because he’d just gotten Marissa back.

“Anyone want coffee when I return?”

Maia and Jack shook their heads.

“I’ll take one, Iz,” Viktor said.

She smiled at him. “Black, right?”

He nodded, his breath hitching as he stared into her sparkling green eyes.

He was in trouble.

Marissa shiveredas she stepped out of the sliding doors into a frigid evening punctuated with below zero wind chills. Winter was making a last stand, and after the warming trend over the past few days, the polar vortex returned with a vengeance.

The VIP wing was adjacent to the medical offices, and today being a Saturday and 10:00 p.m., there was virtually no activity outside this side of the hospital. Street lamps cast a sinister glow over the parking lot. A slither of unease crept up Marissa’s spine.

She warily assessed her surroundings. There were too many dark corners. Not the kind of environment a spook wanted to find herself in if she wasn’t the one in the shadows.

Allison better have a good reason for calling her. She pressed “Call Back” on her phone.

“Marissa?” Allison’s voice sounded surprised and Marissa’s gut was immediately gripped with a sense of foreboding. “Why are you calling?”

Footsteps rushed up from behind her.

Without thinking twice, Marissa spun around in time to ram her elbow into an assailant’s masked face. The man cursed violently and staggered back. Another came at her with a stun gun. Marissa bounced on the balls of her feet, arms cocked in front of her at the ready. Gauging the distance between them, she spun a roundhouse kick to knock the stun gun away.

But she realized there was one assailant too many as bulky arms grabbed her from behind. She stamped on her attacker’s instep, but the man must have been wearing boots of steel because he barely grunted.

She bent forward to crack her head against the guy’s face when he suddenly let her go, shoving her away from him.

Stumbling forward, she was gripped by the excruciating pain of her muscles spasming. Dark spots danced in front of her just as her knees buckled and then there was nothing.

Marissa had been barely gonefive minutes before Viktor decided to go after her. The sensation that something wasn’t right wouldn’t go away. Years on the job had honed that instinct into a sharp edge and he wasn’t ignoring it, especially when his woman was involved.

What he successfully ignored though, was the smirk on Jack’s face when he informed them that he needed to step out and check on something. McCord knew he was going after Marissa.

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