Kara Lennox - Under Deepest Cover

“Christ,” Vargov muttered, still breathing hard and rubbing his neck. He was sweaty and pasty. “I’m too old for this.”

He looked around, but he didn’t look up. Lucy clung to her tree branch, the rough bark scraping her skin, the mosquitoes chomping on her, and prayed.

He holstered his gun and headed back toward the cabin.

Lucy waited until he’d gone inside, then clambered down. The business with the bear had wasted precious time. She’d lost her chance to get past the cabin. She would have to circle far around through the woods. But there was no other choice. She plunged into the thick undergrowth, getting slapped by twigs and branches, trying to be quiet in case Vargov had some listening device.

When she judged she was a good distance from the cabin, she headed downhill roughly parallel to the road, wondering how far she would have to hike before she reached Icy Creek.

Then she heard another car engine.

This time, to her horror, she recognized the distinctive rumble of Stash’s Peugeot. She was still too far from the road to get there in time to head Bryan off. She broke into a run, heedless of the branches whipping at her face, hair and clothes. For a moment she thought she might beat him…but she was too slow.

She broke cover just as the Peugeot turned into the cabin’s driveway. The engine switched off and the driver’s door opened.

“Bryan!” she called out. He froze, turned. “It’s a trap!” She motioned frantically for him to get back in the car.

Her warning came too late. Shots rang out from the house. Bryan dived behind the car.

Lucy knew she should make for the safety of the woods. But all she could think about was being with Bryan again, facing the danger together. She made a headlong dash across the road toward the cabin. More shots came from the house, churning up the asphalt road inches from her feet. She expected one to rip through her flesh any moment. But by some miracle she made it to the car in one piece.

Bryan dragged her down beside him, then behind him, placing his body between her and the shooter. “Lucy, are you crazy? You almost got killed.”

“Yell…at me…later.” She sucked in great gulps of air, feeling like she might pass out. “What do we do now?”

“Who’s in the house?”

“Mr. Vargov.”

“That’s impossible. Vargov is in France.”

“Don’t you think I know my own boss?” she said impatiently. “It’s definitely him. I took off into the woods, and a bear chased me, and then Vargov showed up and he shot at the bear-”

“Lucy, slow down. You’re not making a lot of sense.”

“Maybe we can outrun him,” she said suddenly. “He’s thirty pounds overweight and blind in one eye, so he has lousy depth perception.”

“Maybe so, but he almost got-Did you say Vargov is blind in one eye? And overweight?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know that?” She’d assumed he knew everything.

“Siberia is blind in one eye. And overweight. It’s why he’s not in the field anymore. Christ, Lucy, they’re the same person.”

Lucy let the implications sink in. No wonder Bryan had been having such a hard time with this case. His boss had been providing him with misinformation.

Bryan swore again and pulled his cell phone from his pants pocket. Almost instantly he realized it wouldn’t work.

“Mine doesn’t work, either,” Lucy said. “I wanted to call you and warn you, but I couldn’t.”

“Vargov must have put a scrambler device in the cabin. It’s why he lured us here-so we couldn’t call for help.”

“Then what do we do?”

Bryan silently reviewed their options. “We hold out until dark. We might stand a chance of making a break for it if Vargov can’t see us.”

But Vargov had no intention of allowing them to wait him out. Another flurry of shots rang out from the house. Bryan returned fire, breaking all of the upstairs windows. He practically sat on Lucy to keep her down and out of the line of fire.

When the shooting stopped, it was eerily quiet. Even the birds had stopped chirping, and the breeze had died to nothing.

“Maybe you got him,” Lucy whispered.

“Doubtful.” Bryan’s voice had a strange, strangled sound to it. The hand he’d placed on her shoulder to keep her low to the ground lost its grip, and his gun rattled to the pavement.

“Bryan?”

He slumped against her, bleeding from a wound to the shoulder, dangerously close to his chest.

“Bryan!” In her panic, she forgot about the man shooting at them. Her only thought was that she would have to get Bryan some medical attention or he would die-and that meant getting him into the car and driving down the mountain.

He was conscious, though barely. “What-what are you doing?” he asked when she tried to hook her hands under his arms and lift him.

“You have to get into the car.”

“Lucy, get down!” That was when she realized she’d been standing almost upright, and no one had shot at her.

Maybe Bryan had hit Vargov after all. Maybe he was reloading, or out of bullets altogether. She didn’t have time to speculate. Bryan was bleeding at an alarming rate. The front of his shirt was soaked in red.

“You have to help me, Bry,” she said. “You’re too heavy. I can’t lift you into the car myself.”

Somehow, he managed to summon the strength to rise, casting a wary glance toward the house. But there was no more shooting. Lucy retrieved his gun, just in case, and together they hobbled to the Peugeot’s passenger door. Lucy opened it, and Bryan fell inside.

The keys were in the ignition, thank God. She ran around, jumped behind the wheel, cranked up the car, backed out of the drive and screeched off. It was only when the cabin was half a mile behind them that Lucy dared to breathe a sign of relief. “We did it,” she said, feeling only a mild sense of elation. One hurdle crossed, lots more to go. “Bryan?”

He was slumped in his seat, unconscious.

The moment Lucy had reached Icy Creek, she tried her phone again, and it worked perfectly. She dialed 911, and in an astonishingly short time, tons of people came to her rescue. Two off-duty paramedics were summoned to administer emergency care to Bryan while arrangements were made to airlift him to the closest trauma center, Saint Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie.

Someone had given her a map to Poughkeepsie, and Lucy had made it there in one piece only by the grace of God, because her mind wasn’t on her driving. When she arrived, she could learn nothing about Bryan’s condition other than that he’d still been alive when he’d arrived, and he’d gone almost immediately into surgery.

During the drive, which had seemed to take hours, Lucy had made a decision.

Bryan was close to death, and she did not want him to die alone, with his family blissfully unaware of his condition. So she’d called first Daniel Elliott, then Amanda, then Scarlet. Bryan might not approve; explanations would have to be made, explanations Bryan would have just as soon skipped. But he would just have to be mad at her.

When his mother and father arrived, at virtually the same time, he was still in surgery.

“We couldn’t wait,” the young E.R. intern told them as they stood together, gripping each other’s hands. It was the first time Lucy had seen Bryan’s parents touch, or even acknowledge each other. “We’ll let you know as soon as he comes out of surgery.”

After the doctor walked away, Amanda’s face crumpled. “I never thought we’d be facing this again,” she said to Daniel.

Again? Lucy thought. Then she remembered about Bryan’s childhood illness. He’d had high-risk surgery to correct his heart defect. His parents had probably spent more time than anyone should in hospital waiting rooms.