Page 108 of Poison Evidence

“Good.” If he blew up the AUUV, Zack would go with it. He patted down his pocket. “Fuck.I lost the remote for the detonator.” His gaze scanned the ground. No time to search the jungle. “Where is Sophia?”

“She’s on the slope below the float—I think.” Meaning she’d disappeared in Palea’s blind spot.

Zack’s head had dropped below the float, but his hand appeared, holding a knife that arched downward.

Dimitri heard Sophia’s grunt of pain, then glimpsed the top of her head as her body slammed into the rusted float, shaking it.

“Blow it up!” Sophia shouted.

It hit Dimitri that Sophia had known exactly where the AUUV was, because they’d had to tell Rudy in the thirty minutes before the handoff. He’d probably been wired and she heard every word as they went over the layout and plan, which meant she even knew about the TNT.

C-4 couldn’t be ignited with a bullet, but TNT could.

“Get clear, D,” Kaha’i said. “I’ve got a line on the TNT.

Dimitri rounded the float and pulled Zack away from Sophia, taking a blow to the face and feeling the sting of a blade to the arm.

“Sophia’s not clear!” he shouted to Kaha’i. He turned to see his sister slumped back against the aluminum hull.

She’d been stabbed in the gut. Blood trickled from her mouth. “Tell Palea to take the fucking shot.” She kicked Dimitri in the chest, pushing him down the steep slope in the same moment she grabbed Zack by the hair, pulling him to her.

Dimitri tumbled down the hill. “Do it!”

A bullet sounded. Then came a small blast, followed by a second, roaring explosion. Dimitri’s body pitched in the air.

He landed, bashing his cheek on a jagged rock and abrading his chin on the rough ground.

He slumped as the world spun around him. All he could see upslope was a haze of smoke.

One by one the team checked in on the radio. Luke, Ian, and Kaha’i were fine. The bomb shelter protecting Ivy and Julian was intact.

Slowly, the smoke cleared. Where Sophia, Zack, and the AUUV had been was a giant crater.

Chapter Forty

Dimitri stared at the sleeping boy. Julian Fredrickson. He reached out to brush aside the soft blond hair on Julian’s forehead, but stopped. This was normal, undrugged sleep; a touch might wake him, and Julian needed sleep.

Ivy had taken him to a doctor in Koror, who’d examined Julian both before and after he woke, and they’d determined the sedative he’d been given, while strong, hadn’t harmed him. She’d waited until this afternoon, the day after the explosion in the jungle, when he was awake and alert, to break the news to him that his parents were gone.

She’d held him while he cried, and after hours of confusion and heartbreak and tears, he’d finally fallen into a fitful sleep just an hour before Dimitri was released from questioning. He’d been granted two hours to see Ivy one last time before being taken to Guam, where the process of dissecting Alyssa and Rudy Fredrickson’s espionage, and assessing the damage they’d inflicted on US national security, would begin.

It was almost certain covert operatives abroad had been compromised, and this work would be vital to getting those men and women to safety back in the US.

Dimitri would help in every way he could—which was likely extensive because he knew the keys to the codes Sophia had used. If it was determined the GRU really didn’t know he was alive, or if they could be convinced of his death, the Justice Department would build a new identity for him. In all likelihood, it would be years before he could settle in the US. Years before he could see Ivy again.

He had a mere two hours with her and his nephew before the next phase of his non-life began.

Perhaps it was for the best that Julian was sleeping, considering Dimitri would disappear again. As he navigated his grief, Julian needed an adult who would stick around, which Ivy had said she wanted to do.

Dimitri draped an arm around her shoulder, and together they slipped out of the sleeping boy’s room in the hotel suite. Ivy pulled the door shut without making a sound, then turned into Dimitri’s arms.

“Thank you, for taking care of him,” he whispered as he squeezed her against his chest.

“Of course.” She pulled back from the embrace and took his hand, tugging him away from the closed door and toward the far side of the living room of the deluxe hotel suite, where she dropped onto the sofa and patted the seat next to her. Luke and Ian had gone down to the hotel bar, to give them time alone.

“According to the DIA, Rudy doesn’t have living family members. You’re Julian’s only known living relative.”

“But I can’t claim him without tipping off the GRU.”

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