Page 8 of Trapped With the Secret Agent

“Oh.” She sighed grudgingly. “Ok. I guess.”

“Your confidence in me is overwhelming.”

“Well, it’s not as if you’ve had experience at this sort of thing, is it?”

If she knew just how much familiarity he had withthis sort of thingshe’d lose her shit.

“People who dothatkind of work usually end up dead,” he told her as he towed her across the room.

“How comforting.”

Peter smiled at her dry tone; glad it was dark enough to hide the expression on his face.

It was hard to see anything clearly, her features and figure indistinguishable, but the bones of her hand were small. Fragile.

Focus, man. Focus on the job.

They reached the door.

Peter opened it slowly, peeking through the narrowest of cracks. The basement lights were off and though there was little light, he could see the stairs. The room where they were supposedly waiting like two good little captives was visible as well as a large number of boxes. But no terrorists.

“Come on.” He pulled Georgia out of the room, careful to close the door behind them, and dragged her across the floor.

“Slow down,” she hissed. “Ouch!”

“What?”

“I stubbed my toe.” She grabbed her foot and hopped up and down a couple of times. “Oh, that hurts.” She looked at the offending object. “What’s this doing in the middle of the floor?”

She put a searching hand over the cloth-covered box and lifted the fabric.

“Will you quit fooling around?” Peter watched the stairs with growing unease. Someone could come down at any moment. “If we’re going to stay free, we have to keep moving.” Find another way out.

But Georgia wasn’t paying any attention to him, she was staring at the crate she’d run into. The tarp covering it had slipped. “Is it just me, or does this look like Russian?”

Peter’s head whipped around. He stared at the incandescent yellow lettering on the crate she’d uncovered. “It’s not just you.”

He put his hands under the top of the crate expecting it to be nailed down tight. It wasn’t. The lid came off easily, revealing a six-foot chunky gunmetal gray cylinder. Red lettering, numbers and a few Cyrillic symbols covered the surface gleaming dully in the weak light.

“Shit.” Peter put the lid back down and flipped the cloth back over top of the crate like the whole thing was the largest, live snake ever. Shock encased him in ice for a moment. The next second a wave of super-heated rage freed him, and he had to fight to retain control of himself. “Shit. Shit.Son of a bitch.”

Thosefuckinginsane terrorist bastards. They were counting on the American governmentnotnegotiating. This wasn’t a negotiation. This was something else. A statement the world would never forget.

“What is it?” Georgia was watching his face with wide alarmed eyes, but he had no time to explain. No time to reassure her. He was pretty sure they were both going to die but telling her wasn’t going to help either of them. The ambassador had given him an order. He needed to follow it as best he could, but this discovery changed things

“We have to get back into the storage room.”

“What?” Her eyes widened in shock.

“Now.”

Peter grabbed her hand and yanked her after him.

“Wait a second. What’s going on?”

Peter didn’t answer, he was too busy trying to work out a solution to this disaster.

Stupid, suicidal fanatics.

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