Page 164 of Secret Weapon

“The guards in his room watched a lot of TV, and he saw the AMBER alert.”

Black offered me a chip.“Have to give the man points for creativity.”

“If he’d just waited for one more day…” Barbie said.

“Yeah, damn him for being too competent.But the guy was terrified.Ilya snatched him off the street and forced him to work by threatening his family.Nobody knew he was missing—Ilya made him write an ‘I need space’ note to Laurie—and he thought he was going to die.We got off lightly, I think.The only civilian injury was to the actress who got shot by one of her fellow guests, and thanks to Alaric, she’ll live.”

“What happened to the guy with the gun?”

“He’s out on bail.Maybe he’ll be found guilty of gross negligence, or maybe a high-priced lawyer will get him off, but either way, I expect the actress’ll sue him into oblivion in the inevitable civil suit.”

“Do we have any exposure for the other deaths?”Pale asked.

Black shook his head.“No.James Harrison conveys his thanks, as does President Markovich.”

“How did the weapon end up with Angelou?”Alex asked.“Movie director to terrorist is a big leap.”

It was a smaller leap when you were a fool desperate for money.“Angelou’s talking to anyone who’ll listen.He met Timonenko at Stanford, as we suspected, and they stayed in touch.Fitz was there too—he spent a semester at Stanford as part of an exchange program, but on his transcript, the credits registered against his home school.”A discrepancy nobody had picked up.“Anyhow, Timonenko knew Angelou was having cash-flow problems, and he offered to rent some of the rooms at the terracotta house short-term to help out.Good buddy, huh?Angelou and Svetlana were elsewhere most of the time, and they both swear they didn’t go into those rooms and knew nothing about the weapon or the prisoner or any other illegal shit.”

“Do we believe them?”

“Honestly?I think they knew Timonenko was doing something shady, and Ilya, but Angelou also hoped to attract funding for the movie from Russia, and Timonenko’s connected.So why not turn a blind eye?Anyhow, the FBI can deal with that rat’s nest.We’ve done our part, and thanks to an absolute fucking masterstroke of timing by Ana and Darya, Hallie’s back with us and Anton Stepanov can’t wreak any more havoc.”

“There’s always another Stepanov,” Ana muttered.

“True, so let’s think ahead.I’ve spent some time training with Pale’s crew lately, and I believe more joint exercises would be beneficial, perhaps with Sirius involved too.That way, if we need to work as one expanded team, we’ll gel better.”

Hallie raised a hand.“Uh, could I get some extra training too?Because I really hate being kidnapped, and I promised myself after the last time that I’d stop being a victim, and yesterday…yesterday…” She choked back a sob.“I didn’t know what to do.I had a knife, but I dropped my purse with my gun, and there were three of them, and… I froze.I just froze.”

Surprisingly, it was Darya who spoke up.

“You did exactly the right thing.You kept quiet and let your tracking device do the talking.”Hallie had also recorded everything Ilya said to his men on the boat.She was a smart cookie, even if she lacked confidence at times.“I’m not saying that you shouldn’t train harder, but if you’d tried making a move on Ilya, you’d have ended up as shark food.”

“But I felt so…so helpless.”

“Sometimes, passivity is what’s needed.If you hadn’t stayed calm, Ilya would have thrown you overboard and shown up on theBalestrawithout warning, and we’d all be dead.Do you feel better now?Good.Now erase him from your mind.”

Darya Volkova was definitely an acquired taste, but I didn’t find her quite so bitter anymore.Her heart was in the right place, even if she denied having one.

Hallie swallowed hard, but she nodded.“Is there any news on Ottie Marquette?She was the person who started this whole roller coaster, and it feels as if we’ve forgotten about her.”

“We haven’t forgotten.The latest update is that the doctors are planning to bring her out of her coma tomorrow.Her injuries have healed well enough to try.”

“Has somebody spoken with Leona?”

“I’ve spoken with Nico, and he’s keeping Leona updated.”

Nico… I still owed him a favour.Kaylin La Rocca, the missing woman.Maybe I could put Hallie on that case?But after she’d taken a vacation.She’d had a tough few months, and she needed a break, preferably with Ford.I’d need to meet with Nico again, get more details.If all went according to plan, I’d be paying another visit to Baldwin’s Shore anyway, so I could kill two birds with one stone.

Hopefully.

I’d need to have a conversation with Darya first, but coward that I was, I decided to put that little chat off until tomorrow.

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