Page 86 of Lethal Alliance

Dimitry tilts his head with a rather hard grin. “Glad we got that straight.”

“Dimitry stays with me.” There was never a chance he wasn’t coming to Miami. “Luis will coordinate with Pavel and hold point on the ground back here in Malaga.”

“So Darya is definitely flying to Zurich.” Mickey says it flatly, his eyes on me.

I nod. “The doctor cleared it.”

Dimitry snorts. “You mean you have as much chance of keeping her away as you do Mickey.”

Pavel smirks, then, seeing my face, hastily composes himself and buries his head in a screen.

“Everyone is fully briefed on Darya’s condition.” I glare around the table. “I have obstetricians on speed dial in three different countries, and you all have their numbers. Even the faintest sign of something going wrong...” I don’t need to finish my sentence. Bryce, Pavel, and Luis are already nodding vigorously.

“As for you.” I fix Mickey with a hard eye. “I know that we agreed you could be in Miami. But I won’t change my mind about where you stay while this is going down. Mak has a secure location already set up on the ground. That’s where you’ll be throughout this whole thing.”

“For the hundredth time, I copy that, loud and clear.” He shakes his head and taps away at his laptop, not bothering to look up.

“Make sure you bloody well do.” I eye the top of his head skeptically. “Mak, Mickey is flying direct from here to Miami with you, as agreed.”

I don’t add that Mickey’s well-being rests in Mak’s hands.

I don’t need to.

I look around the room. “As I said, from Zurich, I’ll travel with Mak’s team. Bryce, you’re heading up the security detail that will bring Darya back here to Malaga in my jet.” I turn to Pavel. “I want you watching every fucking mile of her flight. Anything so much as smells off, you coordinate with Bryce and Luis to mobilize everything we have. I’ve got people on standby in every major city from Zurich to Spain. If you need to emergency land, if you need anything, you have the contacts.”

They all nod. It isn’t like I haven’t said it all a hundred times.

I glance at Mak. “Over to you.”

“From Zurich you’re invisible.” Mak clicks, and the screen changes to a split screen showing both the Everglades house and the Coconut Grove compound. “We’ll land at a private airstrip outside of Miami and meet the rest of my team in a secure location for a final briefing.”

“But you’re not sharing this location with us.” Pavel, for once, speaks up without being asked. His dissatisfaction with this particular part of the plan is patently obvious, as it has been all night.

“Nope.” Mak grins at him. “Like I said, my team will take it from Zurich.”

Pavel scowls at me. I suppress a grin of my own. “We’ve got Lars Andersson somewhere in the mix, Pavel. We have to assume he’s watching everything we do. So far, Mak’s presence here is entirely off radar. I’d like to keep it that way. If we assume Andersson will manage to track our flight log to Zurich, all he will see is Darya and me arriving and then leaving the same day. That’s what I’d like him to see.”

“I told you the flight logs are hidden!” Pavel doesn’t attempt to hide his indignation.

“And we’ve both seen firsthand what Lars Andersson is capable of.” Mickey doesn’t look up from his screen, but I notice that Pavel takes more notice of him than he does of me. That should piss me off, but it doesn’t. It never ceases to astonish me just how quickly Mickey has earned the respect of the entire ops center. “I’m still trying to crack these fucking trojans he came at Mercura with. Sorry,” he mutters, glancing up at me.

I frown. “You’re working on thosenow?”

He lifts a shoulder, his fingers still flying as he meets my eyes. “It relaxes me.”

“Jesus,” mutters Dimitry, shaking his head as the other men in the room shake with silent laughter.

“Of course it does,” I say dryly, seeing my own amusement mirrored in Mak’s eyes. “Well, Einstein, you might need to give the keyboard a rest and get some sleep. Wheels go up at oh six hundred tomorrow.” I glance around the table. “We all good?”

I don’t need their nods. We’ve been good for hours, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t hammered home every goddamn point.

There’s too much at stake not to.

“Einstein?” Mickey rolls his eyes as he closes his laptop. “What about Gummo? Or Mitnick? Einstein was just a physicist. Gummo is the crypto king, and he’s so damned good nobody even knows his realname.”

27

DARYA

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