Elle eased the safety off the H&K .45 and put her hand on the door. It was unlocked.

She raised the gun and swung into position just inside the door. The soft blue-white glow of a computer monitor filled the bedroom. Data streamed across the screen.

And the illumination fell across a figure lying in the middle of the floor. She knew exactly what the black dot in the center of the body’s forehead was.

Silently, a shadow separated itself from the darkness. She pulled the gun up and fired. A man cursed in surprise.

In the next handful of seconds, her feet were swept from under her as a weight fell on top of her, knocking out her breath. “Stop,” a deep voice said as she crashed a forearm into his nose and eye. “I didn’t kill him.”

She went still. “Then let me up.”

Cautiously, the man lifted his head and looked at her.

She gasped. “You!”

MILLS & BOON

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Dear Reader,

Ever since I wrote Double-Cross about twin sisters Samantha St. John and Elle Petrenko, I’ve been dying to get back to them and tell more of their story. I mean, come on: twin sisters who were separated for twenty-three years! Who wouldn’t want to know more?

I love suspense/romance novels that introduce me to new places, so I really wanted this one to move around. And it does! From the Red Light District in Amsterdam to Germany to Russia to the Greek Islands. I also love stories about sibling rivalry and misunderstanding and I knew I had to include the problems Sam and Elle would have just trying to figure out the pecking order. That’s one of those things that can take all your life if you come from a big family—like I do. And Elle’s dad seems to be a great dad to have if you’re a spy. One of the things I’ve discovered in my own life is that no matter how out-of-the-norm your life is (and there are parts I still can’t discuss!), your family life tends to be normal and weird at the same time.

I hope you enjoy Sam and Elle’s new story. Please stop by my Web page at www.meredithfletcher.com to say hello and tell me what you thought.

Happy reading!

Meredith Fletcher

Look-Alike
Meredith Fletcher

Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Meredith Fletcher for her contribution to the ATHENA FORCE miniseries.

MEREDITH FLETCHER

doesn’t really call any place home. She blames her wanderlust on her navy father, who moved the family several times around the United States and other countries. The one constant she had was her books. The battered trunk of favorite novels followed her around the world when she was growing up and shared dorm space with her in college. These days, the trunk is stored, but sometimes comes with Meredith to visit A-frame houses high in the Colorado mountains, cottages in Maine, where she likes to visit lighthouses and work with fishing crews, and rental flats where she takes moments of “early retirement” for months at a stretch. Interested readers can reach her at MFletcher1216@aol.com.

To Drs. Donna and Brian Johnson, staunch supporters

of Athena Force and of my writing. And to my editor,

Natashya Wilson, who loves romance adventure as

much as I do and helped me straighten all the wrinkles.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

Prologue

Outside Suwan, Berzhaan

The Middle East

“Please! I beg you! Don’t kill me! I made a mistake! Just a mistake!”

Seated in the back of the luxury limousine, Vasilios Quinn listened to the man beg for his life. It was music to his ears. A return to days he hadn’t seen in many years.

Soundproof windows kept the man’s panicked cries from reaching the dark night outside the limousine. Less than five miles from Suwan, the capital city of Berzhaan, they were in desert highlands filled with hard stone ravines and shifting sandstorms.

It was the perfect place for an execution.

“I swear to you! It will never happen again! I will not allow myself to be so tempted!” Tears ran down the man’s quivering jowls. He was in his thirties yet covered in mounds of baby fat. He hadn’t known the hard life so many of his countrymen had suffered.

Berzhaan was part of the Middle East and had faced a precarious existence all its life. The current government, headed by Prime Minister Omar Razidae, suffered from internal strife. The United States was believed to support Berzhaan’s Kemeni guerrillas, who wanted control of the country. As a result, the native terrorist network—the Q’Rajn—attacked the government and the Kemenis alike to drive out the U.S., as well as American sympathizers. Death did a daily business in Berzhaan.

Quinn’s business was with the Q’Rajn. The man on the limousine floor had acted as go-between to the terrorists.

“I trusted you, Malik,” Quinn said.

Malik sobbed. “I swear, you can still trust me!”

“Unfortunately,” Quinn said, “trust is like virginity. Once given, it can’t be given again. You have to be careful whom you extend it to. I have been very careful. You—” he pointed the silenced Glock .45 at Malik’s nose “—are my first mistake in over twenty years.”

“I can fix it! I swear!” Malik clasped his hands in front of him. Held on his elbows and knees as he was, dressed in a robe and trembling, he was a poster child for subjugation.

Quinn had been at a soiree when his security team had called him to let him know they had Malik in custody. When he finished here, he intended to return to that soiree. His gray hair was carefully coiffed, and though he was a big man, his tuxedo fit him perfectly.

“You brought someone to our meeting,” Quinn said. “You knew I didn’t operate that way.”

“She won’t talk!” Malik said. “She’s just a girl! Young! She doesn’t know anything! I give you my word!”

Quinn almost laughed. The two bodyguards holding Malik grinned and shook their heads. Of course, they had already killed the girl and dumped her body.

Quinn’s cell phone rang. He wasn’t pleased at being interrupted. “Yes.”

“The breach in security may be more severe than we had believed.”

Quinn cursed and leaned back in the limousine. He’d thought dealing with Malik would be the end of it. “I thought you had a handle on this.”

“I still do.” The voice at the other end of the connection was calm and assured. The caller’s name was Arnaud Beck. He was a mercenary leader with international contacts, and Quinn had never met a more efficient killing machine. “Our competitors are working more quickly than we had imagined.”

The competitors were an intelligence team that Quinn hadn’t yet identified. His intelligence people had tracked them back to a nebulous agency that had ties to a Web site, www.AA.gov. The site appeared to be the home page of an all-girls school, but its advanced firewalls and security countermeasures had stymied every attempt Quinn’s people had made to crack it. Even the information brokers Quinn had access to had as much rumor as fact about the organization behind AA.gov. Maybe it was a cover for interagency information, or maybe—as a few reports indicated—it was an enforcement arm that stopped short of assassinations.

The most curious facet about AA.gov was the connection to the school just outside of the Glendale/Phoenix, Arizona, area in the United States. From circumspect investigation, Quinn had learned that the Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women had many ties to the United States government. Many of the school’s select graduates went on to important positions within federal and state agencies.

“They’ve already placed an agent in the field,” Beck went on. “I’ve sent you a file.”

Turning, Quinn pulled the back of the seat down beside him, revealing the computer. A small dish at the back of the limousine connected him to a satellite array.

He opened the e-mail feature and decrypted the message, then linked to the Web site where Beck had posted his progress. One long minute later, a digital image flickered onto the LCD screen.

The woman was young, perhaps midtwenties, and beautiful. Her white-blond hair fell to her shoulders. Ice blue eyes. In the picture, she looked like a tourist, dressed in light summerwear. For some reason that he didn’t understand, she looked hauntingly familiar.

“Who is she?” Quinn asked.

“She’s in Amsterdam now,” Beck replied, evasive. “She made contact with a man who sells me information on a regular basis. She asked him about Tuenis Meijer. Once she had Meijer’s address, she went there. But, of course, Meijer hasn’t returned yet or I would have him.”

“How do you know she was asking about Meijer?”

“The man who sold her the information called me and gave me her picture.”

“What have you done about her involvement?”

“I’ve got two men on her now. She’s currently at the railway station awaiting an arrival.”

“Not departing?” That would be too good, Quinn thought. Too easy. And too much to hope for.

“She hasn’t bought a ticket. I tracked her arrival into Amsterdam through computer records. Her passport says she’s Crystal Downing. From Newark, New Jersey.”

“She’s not?”

“Her name is Samantha St. John. She’s an Athena Academy graduate. She fits the profile for the AA.gov background we have access to. I got her picture and name from a school yearbook.”

Cursing, Quinn closed the computer and stored it behind the seat again.

He struggled to remain calm. For over twenty years, his secret had been safe. At least, relatively safe. There was one woman who knew more about him than she should, a woman who some said was only a myth, a black widow who seduced and killed her mate and any man she found useless once she was done with them. For the last twenty-plus years, she had been blackmailing him.

That blackmailer was believed to have one of the most sophisticated information networks in the world, with secrets that could cripple or topple major corporations and nations. Despite years of searching, Quinn had not been able to find his blackmailer or discern her identity. Now, if he moved quickly, he had a chance to find that woman and kill her. Perhaps, if he moved quickly enough, he might even hope to learn the secrets she knew. They were worth a lot of money. But he needed Meijer.

“My path may cross the competition’s,” Beck said.

“If she gets in your way, kill her.”

There was no hesitation. “Yes, sir.”

“And let me know as soon as it’s dealt with.” Quinn hung up the phone and put it back in his jacket.

“Sahib,” Malik whispered tremulously from the car. “Please?”

Ruthlessly, Quinn knotted his fist in the man’s hair and yanked him from the limousine. Ten feet from the car, Quinn put the silencer to Malik’s head and squeezed the trigger. The body dropped onto the shifting sand.

Quinn breathed in the cool, dry desert air, held it a moment, then let it out. Everything is controllable, he told himself. With enough money, enough blood, enough determination, everything is controllable.

He would spend all to protect himself.

Chapter 1

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Once you get to Amsterdam, Sam, your life will be in danger. You can’t trust anyone.

Remembering Allison Gracelyn’s last warning before she’d boarded the plane in Phoenix, Samantha St. John stood waiting in the lobby of Central Station, Amsterdam’s main railway station, and forced the tension and doubt away. You were warned about the danger, she chided herself. You didn’t tell your lover about it, but you told your sister.

Guilt stung her, but she didn’t give in to it. Riley McLane was her lover and had been a big part of her life for almost nineteen months now. But she wasn’t used to sharing everything in her life. There were parts she wasn’t ready to share—didn’t know how to share. Being alone was natural; being part of a couple wasn’t.

Riley was a CIA agent, as she was, but with a lot more fieldwork experience than she’d had. Normally she acted as support, specializing in languages and computers. Riley was definitely hands-on for retrievals and terminations.

Riley had a tendency to be overprotective and a control freak, which could be endearing, Sam had found. But for her current mission, she needed backup with no questions asked. Since she and her sister had been planning to get together for a while, Sam had elected to ask Elle to come with her.

Sam’s sister was an intelligence agent as well. Elle worked for the Russian government’s SVR, which was that country’s equivalent of the CIA. Although they’d known each other less than a year and a half, Sam knew Elle wouldn’t ask a lot of questions if Sam asked her not to. That was one of the things Sam truly appreciated about her sister.

And if things truly got dangerous on the assignment, it would be easier to disappear with Elle, who had been to Amsterdam several times before, than with Riley, who had only a passing acquaintance with the country. Sam told herself that was the real reason for her decision, but she knew she didn’t want to put Riley in harm’s way if she couldn’t tell him why she was doing it.

And she couldn’t tell him, because she didn’t know. Only Allison and Alexandra Forsythe’s request, and the Athena Academy bond between them, had moved her into action.

Dozens of other people waited for the train as well. Night lurked dark and mysterious outside the station windows, and the red glow of the red-light district in the distance held the promise of forbidden ecstasy. Music in several languages boomed from personal entertainment systems. Children and teenagers played video games while parents consulted travel brochures. Monitors broadcast information and news from around the world. The hustle and bustle of the station became an ocean of sight and sound that pressed against her senses.

Sam wore dark blue notch-tab capri pants and a white scoop neck sweater. She’d left her shoulder-length, white-blond hair loose, and dark sunglasses hid her ice-blue eyes even though it was dark outside. According to the tourist pamphlets, the area was rife with pickpockets and purse-snatchers. At five feet three inches tall and slender, she knew she’d be a target for predators. As a safeguard, she carried her ID, passport and cash in a pocket. She felt naked without a weapon.

And she was nervous.

You have every right to be nervous, she told herself. You’re meeting your sister in person for the fourth time in your whole life.

For all of her childhood that she could remember, Sam had been an orphan raised in foster homes. She’d learned to be quiet and self-contained. She wasn’t used to family. Most of the foster homes she’d been in preferred not to see their charges. She’d learned to spend incredible amounts of time surfing the Internet.

Ultimately, it had been her interest in computers that had saved her, though her salvation had taken a strange route. When she’d been nine years old, she’d hacked into a sensitive government site, not really knowing what she was getting into, just plugging away at a barrier that had stymied her young mind. Her success had triggered an armed invasion by federal forces.

But a judge’s decision and government intervention had brought her to the attention of the Athena Academy for the Advancement of Women. The seventh-through-twelfth-grade school was a special academy set up for the smartest, most promising young women to learn and explore their every potential.

While there, Sam had come to know the only family she’d ever felt part of. The Cassandras. Her orientation group had all been assigned at random, but their senior student leader, Lorraine “Rainy” Miller, had united them into a group of best friends. Even graduation hadn’t ended that relationship.

Rainy’s recent murder and the fallout from their investigation and eventual exposure of the killers had only drawn the Cassandras closer. Sam hadn’t needed anything outside that world.

Until she’d found out about Elle Petrenko.

Last year, Sam had been detained by the CIA and accused of being responsible for a double-cross in Berzhaan that had triggered a lot of adverse publicity for the United States. No one expected Sam to have an evil twin.

But Elle Petrenko was her twin, separated from Sam when they were barely toddlers when their parents, who had been Russian double agents for the British intelligence agency MI-6, were murdered. The events around those deaths and how Sam eventually was abandoned in America still hadn’t been explained.

Thankfully, Elle hadn’t been an evil twin. She’d merely been a Russian agent performing her own mission in Berzhaan. Neither Sam nor Elle had known the other existed, but once they’d met, each of them had felt as if a missing piece had been restored to them. Though their lives were worlds apart and filled with covert responsibilities, they made an effort to stay in touch by phone and e-mail and meet when they could.

So, for the fourth meeting, Sam thought glumly, it’s all, “Come to see me in Amsterdam and try not to die.” What kind of sister am I? She sighed, because she truly didn’t know the answer to that question at present.

She had mixed emotions. On one hand, she wanted to see Elle and they’d already made arrangements to be together this week, which had been hard to plan to begin with. Giving up the time wasn’t something Sam was willing to do. But neither was turning away from a request Allison and Alex had tendered, knowing full well Sam was planning on seeing Elle.

On the other hand, Sam knew how valuable Elle would be in Amsterdam, a place Sam had never been. Being a good agent was all about having resources in place in the field. So what are you? she asked herself. A sister, an agent or a rat?

“Hi.”

Startled, Sam turned to look at the speaker. He’d come up behind her quietly.

The man was tall, at least six foot three, with broad shoulders and lean hips. His shaved head gave him a look of menace, and a reddish soul patch made a point on his lower lip. Gray-green hazel eyes, like those of a big jungle cat, surveyed her impassively and held deep melancholy. The black biker leathers and heavy-metal concert T-shirt didn’t give much away. He could have been a dockworker or a Goth.

“Are you American?” The man spoke English flawlessly.

Because she felt contrary and because she didn’t want to let anyone know her business, Sam answered in French. “I don’t speak English. Do you speak French?” Languages and computers were her specialty at the CIA.

He switched to German, which she also understood. “No French. I speak German.”

Sam decided to cut the guy a break. He might even know more languages. She spoke in German. “Your German is very good.”

“I’m told my English is really good, too,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Sam replied.

The man shrugged. “I’m amazed.”

Sam arched an eyebrow.

“You’re so gifted linguistically.”

“What makes you think that?”

Again the shrug, just a slight lift of the broad, leather-covered shoulders. “You speak French. You speak German.” He reached out slowly, without threat, and touched the pamphlet in her hand. “And you read English. Quite an accomplishment.”

Glancing down, Sam saw that she was indeed holding an English language pamphlet. “Busted.” She smiled, but she was wary at the same time. The man was very observant.

“I came over because you look like a tourist. This is a dangerous place for tourists.”

“You just volunteer to wait with strangers in the train station?”

He gave a slight nod. “It’s a hobby.”

“Maybe,” Sam said sweetly, “you should seek counseling.”

Perhaps he had a comeback for that, but Sam didn’t find out. At that moment the warning Klaxons went off, filling the station with noise and vibration. The crowd moved around her, getting ready for the train’s arrival.

In that moment, Sam got a clue as to what the man’s real interest was. Two men dressed in casual streetwear moved toward the platform. They had short, military-style haircuts and wore light jackets. An air of danger clung to both of them.

The big man, dressed in black, moved with them, shifting so that they stayed in his view.

The two men kept their distance.

Sam looked at the man in black. Are you hunting them? Or avoiding them? The situation intrigued her.

The train stopped with a grinding screech of brakes. Seconds later, the doors opened and the passengers began to debark in a press of moving bodies.

Sam stood on tiptoe to peer through the crowd.

Elle Petrenko stepped out from a middle car. She was carrying a baby and chatting amiably with a woman only a little older than her, who was carrying another toddler.

A baby? Sam was shocked. Elle hadn’t said anything about a baby. But then, there was a lot Sam didn’t know about her twin. Elle seemed outgoing and friendly, always willing to share her life, but Sam didn’t do that because of her upbringing. Naturally she assumed others held back things they didn’t want known as well. But a baby?

Three meetings in person over the last eighteen months, combined with several phone calls that were, no doubt, monitored by their respective intelligence agencies, and off-the-grid e-mails—none of it could complete a relationship that had a twenty-three-year gap.

Elle wore caramel-colored twill pants and a black, short-sleeved turtleneck that flattered her slender figure. Boots and a carry-on tote completed the ensemble. Unlike Sam, Elle wore her hair up.

After a brief conversation, Elle handed the baby to the young woman, who waved goodbye and managed to head out under a full head of steam with both kids. Sam released a breath, but a bit of wistfulness tugged at her heart. She was beginning to understand what it felt like to be a sister, but what would it be like to be an aunt? Just the sight of Elle holding that baby had started a whole kaleidoscope of possibilities tumbling through Sam’s head. She’d never really thought about family before. Now she was seeing generations of it ahead of her.

Glancing across the waiting area, Elle spotted Sam and walked over.

“Hello, sis,” Elle said, sounding totally American instead of Russian.

“Hi,” Sam replied.

Elle glanced up at the man beside Sam. “Who’s your friend?”

“You’re twins,” the big man observed.

Elle smiled but didn’t take her ice-blue eyes off the man in black. “He’s cute, but has he always been this slow?”

The man frowned at her.

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “I just found him.”

Looking a trifle uncomfortable, the man crossed his arms over his broad chest.

“He’s big,” Elle said, grinning slightly. Her blue eyes sparkled. “Can we afford to feed him?”

“He’s not staying,” Sam said. “Do you have bags?”

Elle patted the carry-on. “Just this one. I knew you said we’d be on the go tonight, so I made arrangements to have my bags delivered to my room.”

“Good.” Sam was already feeling antsy to be moving. She looked up at the big man. “Well, good luck finding another tourist to guard.”

He nodded.

Elle fixed him with the full force of her ice-blue eyes. “Do you have a name?”

“Joachim,” he said, then looked a little irritated.

Sam thought maybe it was because he’d answered before he could stop himself. Elle had that effect on men. Even though they were twins, Elle was able to do more with her looks and her personality than Sam was. She’s just more willing to take risks than I am, Sam thought for what must have been the thousandth time.

“I’m Elle.” She offered her hand.

Joachim took Elle’s hand and held it for a moment, then seemed reluctant to let go.

“Are you going to be in Amsterdam long?” Elle asked.

“A few days.”

“Maybe I’ll see you around.”

Sam didn’t think that was a good idea. Joachim was rousing her warning senses. Maybe it was the quiet way he moved, or the fact that he’d avoided the two suspicious-looking men who now seemed to have disappeared, or maybe even the fact that Elle was acting twitterpated over him, but Sam wanted him gone.

“Perhaps,” Joachim replied. He offered a small wave. “Have a safe trip.” Then he was in motion, walking away from them.

Elle watched him go.

Despite her misgivings, and feeling a little guilty because Riley was back home missing her, Sam also watched the big man walk away. The tight leather pants hugged his firm butt in ways that Sam could appreciate even though she was spoken for.

“Wow,” Elle said.

“Wow?” Sam grumbled.

“Definitely wow,” Elle replied. “He’s one of those guys.”

“What guys?”

“Those guys you hate to see go but you love to watch leave.”

Sam grimaced. During the last year of getting to know Elle, she’d found her sister was much more outspoken than she was. “Personally, I thought he was creepy. He appeared behind me, out of nowhere. He told me he thought I was a tourist and shouldn’t be alone.”

“Doesn’t sound creepy to me. Sounds like a nice guy.” Elle glanced at her meaningfully. “You’ve already got a nice guy. Maybe that’s why you’re invulnerable to Joachim’s mutant abilities.”

“Mutant abilities?”

“It’s from a children’s cartoon show,” Elle explained. “The X-Men.”

“In your country?”

“In yours.” Elle gave her a perplexed look. “You know, it surprises me sometimes how little you know about being a kid.”

I didn’t get to spend a lot of time being a kid, Sam thought.

“What mutant abilities does he have?” Sam asked.

“Irresistible charm and devastating looks. Definitely. Oh, and brooding menace.”

“I must be invulnerable.”

“You,” Elle countered, “have Riley.”

The crowd flowed steadily out of the building as the train powered up to depart again. Joachim and the two other men were nowhere in sight.

“What’s on the agenda?” Elle asked. “You said part of this little get-together was going to be a working vacation.”

“I’ve got to find someone.”

“We already found someone. You let him go.”

“Look,” Sam said, more shortly than she intended because she was tired and tense from meeting with Elle and dealing with Allison and Alex’s unexplained request, “if you hurry, you might be able to catch up to him.”

A calm look filled Elle’s face. She touched Sam’s arm. “Hey, just joking, Sam. I’ve been really looking forward to seeing you again. It’s been three months. I’m kind of jet-lagged from the trip. To make this happen, I’ve had to be up and running for the last thirty-seven hours. I’m not at my best.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said. My sisterly skills could definitely use some improvement, she thought. During their time together, Elle was always the more relaxed one, more able to accept everything that happened. As a foster child, Sam had always fought to maintain security and familiarity. She didn’t like it when things changed.

“No biggie,” Elle said. “Buy me a mocha latte along the way and you’ll find I can be all about forgiveness.”

Sam smiled and shook her head. “Do you realize that sometimes you sound more American than I do?”

“I,” Elle replied, “take that as a compliment. I’ve worked hard to sound that way.” Leaning in, she whispered conspiratorially in a thick Russian accent that she had once assured Sam came from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Sam had gotten on the Internet to learn who those cartoon characters were. “Eet vas all included een my secret spy training, comrade.”

“Terrific,” Sam said. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. Why haven’t you already found the guy that you were sent here to find?”

Sam led the way out of the terminal. “It’s possible that I’ve been looking in the wrong places.”

“Where did you look?”

“At his house.”

“Hmm. That’s a good place to start. He wasn’t home?”

“No.”

“What about his place of work?”

“He’s a criminal,” Sam said. “He doesn’t keep regular hours or an office. He lives on a houseboat, so even his residence moves around a lot.”

“Makes it more difficult, but not impossible.”

Sam nodded. “This guy has pissed off a lot of the wrong people from what I’ve been able to find out. Someone may have killed him.”

“So instead of a person,” Elle said, “you could be looking for a boat anchor or fish chum.”

“Exactly,” Sam said. “I have to tell you, this could be dangerous.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Elle replied with a smile. “I’m a secret agent. I figured it out all on my own. C’mon. If I’m going to have to stay on my toes, we need to find me that mocha latte.”

Chapter 2

Standing in the shadows in front of Central Station, Joachim Reiter watched the two young women leave the building. They headed toward the red-light district and that didn’t please him. Although the sex shops and brothels were tourist attractions, they were also places were people got into trouble and sometimes got killed.

And those two women—or maybe only the one he’d first met at the train station—were in trouble. Otherwise Arnaud Beck’s men wouldn’t have led Joachim to them.

The last hour had been quite the circus, Joachim reflected. Tension and nervousness rattled through him. He didn’t want to be there, so far from home and his family. Being out of the country right now threatened everything. If any of his subterfuges were found out, he was dead. More important, so was his family.

He exhaled and avoided the fear clamoring inside his mind. One step at a time, Joachim. You won’t make any mistakes. Just get this done and get back home.

But things had already gotten more complicated than he’d guessed. He’d been sent to Amsterdam to find a man named Tuenis Meijer and had tripped across Beck’s men while gathering information about his target. Thinking that Beck’s men might lead him to Meijer, Joachim had followed them, staying out of sight. They’d never known he was there until he let them see him in the railway station.

Then they had locked on to the young blond woman at the station. Joachim still didn’t know who she was or what threat or possibility of gain she represented to a man like Arnaud Beck, but he’d known he couldn’t let them kidnap her or kill her.

Although he had, in the past, kidnapped and killed other men, Joachim couldn’t stand idly by while something happened to the woman. He wasn’t that kind of man. And he didn’t want to be the kind of man Günter Stahlmann paid him to be.

He was working on a way out. If trying to get there didn’t get him or his family killed in the process. Still, he played that deadly game by his rules and he’d made Günter respect them. Rule number one was that Joachim would never harm an innocent.

That was why he had broken his cover and revealed himself to Beck’s men. Although they’d had their quarry in their sights, his presence there had upped the stakes. For them all, he ruefully admitted. No one was supposed to know he was there, either.

That decision was going to bring him trouble. He took trouble one step at a time, though. He’d learned that from years spent living between the crush of evil and the law. None of it had been easy. Even the way out he was now reaching for couldn’t promise he would live out his life instead of getting a bullet through his head or a knife across his throat for his betrayal.

But the women had gone one way and Beck’s men, now wise to his presence, had gone another. It was a stalemate that he could live with at the moment. What happened to them later was out of his hands. If something did happen, he hoped he would never know.

One of his cell phones chirped for attention. He pulled the device from inside his jacket, but his eyes stayed on the two blond women walking toward Oude Zijde.

A freighter passing in the north canal on the other side of the station sounded its horn, the tone mournful on the night air, like some lonely beast.

“Yes,” Joachim said into the phone. He spoke Russian now. Like his German and English, his voice carried no dialect.

“I have an address for you,” the young woman’s voice on the other end announced. “Your target lives on a houseboat called Satyr Dreams down on Achterburgwal. It’s near the intersection of Rusland Street.”

“I can find it.” Joachim paused, wondering how much he should reveal. But then, there was always the possibility that the woman was tracking his progress. “Beck’s men are here.”

Some of the confidence vanished from the young woman’s tone. “Are you certain?”

“One of them is known to me. He’s a criminal named Felix Horst. He specializes in armory and wetwork.” Wetwork was a euphemism for murder and assassination. Joachim knew people who did such things, but he would never be one of them.

“You knew that it was likely you would cross paths with Beck. I told you that.”

“You did. But if Beck, or at least one of his lieutenants, is here, it affects what we are able to do in the future. If you have any influence with him…”

“Beck is not part of this organization. I told you that, too.”

She had, but Joachim hadn’t necessarily believed her. The fact that she knew Beck, and knew what kind of man he was, made her information on him suspect. Most people outside the criminal syndicate and law enforcement didn’t know about Beck. That she did told him he needed to be careful.

“Concentrate on your mission, Joachim,” she chided him. “Call me when you reach his houseboat.”

The phone clicked in Joachim’s ear. He closed the cell phone and replaced it in his pocket. Slowly, he turned and surveyed the street. Is she watching? He wasn’t certain.

Paranoia was a constant state of his profession. The feeling was one of the things that kept him alive all these years. His world was filled with gunrunners and black marketers, dope dealers and blackmailers, thieves and murderers. The sad thing was, he felt more at home in that world than any other.

Sometimes, when he let his own doubts and limitations plague him, he lost hope that he would ever be out of the sewer he was in. All his life that he could remember had been about violence, about crime that boiled down to sex and money. Even if he got out of it, got away from Günter and men like him, Joachim wondered how he was supposed to live like a normal man.

He would never be normal.

At the canal he flagged down a water taxi and gave his target’s address, wishing he knew more about why he was there.

And why a man as dangerous as Arnaud Beck was, too.

As Sam walked toward the area, Amsterdam’s red-light district pulsed neon against the encroaching night. It was just after 10:00 p.m. locally and the nine-to-five crowds had given the city over to the nightlife. The clubs and bars were full, and music stained the air, but traffic was sparse.

The city was shaped like a horseshoe, built on the old streets that had accommodated horse-and-buggy traffic. The canals had always offered transport, and the majority of destinations were within walking distance. Small parties and big groups walked through the streets and window-shopped.

She and Elle walked alone.

The Voorburgwal Canal lay to their right and the Achterburgwal Canal to their left. Buildings were crammed together in the space between. Trees and boats lined the canals and bicyclists weaved between the pedestrians.

The red-light district created a ruby bubble of illumination in Oude Zijde, the old side of the city. Although she hadn’t been there yet, Sam knew sex shops and brothels filled the area. What she was probably going to see intrigued her, but at the same time she was put off by reports of sexual slavery. Willing adults putting on a sex show in a window was one thing, but she had to wonder if some were forced to perform.

“When was the last time you were in Amsterdam?” Sam asked, curious about her sister’s life.

“Five months ago. Perhaps six.”

“You never mentioned it.”

“I was working.”

“Ah.” Although they’d shared a lot about their lives, Sam knew they kept secrets from each other. Given the nature of their professions, they had to.

However, the unclassified bits and pieces gave them much to discuss. Like who to bribe in Rio de Janeiro to get weapons and transportation, or who to lean on in Paris to get information about the black market network. Several of the people they’d met on missions had been the subject of more than a few laughs over beer and pizza.

Sam couldn’t help wondering if the mission they were presently on would be something they’d laugh about later. The fact that she hadn’t found her quarry yet spoke volumes about how difficult it might become.

Neither Allison nor Alex had given many clues. They’d simply come to Sam and asked her to find the man. Sam knew that Allison had been digging around in some of the secret files they’d found during their investigation of Rainy’s murder. The files’ importance had taken on a new dimension when Alex had connected them to the death of Allison’s own mother, Athena Academy founder Marion Gracelyn. She’d felt certain that the mystery assignment came out of those, but she had no clue what it pertained to.

Now, in the middle of Amsterdam, misgivings rattled against her confidence. She didn’t doubt that she could find Meijer, but the danger quotient was doubtlessly going to go up.

And I invited my sister to do this, Sam thought. Way to go.

“Who are you after?” Elle asked.

“Tuenis Meijer. He’s a—”

“Computer cracker,” Elle said.

She used the correct term for the man’s chosen illegal profession. Hacker was a term used by the public as a result of movies and misinformation. True masters of the craft referred to themselves as crackers because they cracked the code that protected information. “Right,” Sam said.

“Sorry,” Elle said. “Didn’t mean to spoil your briefing. It’s just that I’ve dealt with guys who have done business with Tuenis in the past.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “I knew you were familiar with Amsterdam. That’s one of the reasons I asked you to meet me here instead of canceling out. Your knowing Meijer is a plus.”

“He’s truly slime.”

“That’s what I gathered.”

Elle stopped and gazed south. “He keeps a houseboat on the Achterburgwal near Rusland Street.”

“I know,” Sam said. “I’ve already been by there. He wasn’t home.”

“Do you have a destination in mind?” Elle asked.

“I thought we would cruise the strip. Find out where the action is.” Sam walked along the Voorburgwal. Neon shimmered like stripes of runny rainbows in the dark water of the canal. A passing motorboat created a pulse of vibrant noise. Waves slapped against the houseboats moored at the canal’s edge. “Tuenis has a predilection for sex clubs.”

“Yes, he does.” Elle smiled. “This should be interesting, since you haven’t been here before.” She turned and headed into the nearest alley. “You won’t find the ones Tuenis will be interested in out on the street. He’s a truly bad boy. At least, he thinks he is. We’ll need to hit the alleys. That’s where you find the more aggressive clubs.”

In just a matter of steps, Sam felt like she’d been transported into another world. Narrow, long and winding, the alley slipped between tall buildings filled with large picture windows on the lower floors. Red lights ringed windows in which provocatively dressed, semiclad and nude women lounged, danced or moved in open invitation to voyeurism.

It was like nothing Sam had ever seen before. But she couldn’t help smiling, thinking about what Riley would say if she showed up in his bedroom dressed—or undressed—in one of those outfits. In fact, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to say anything until he managed to pull his jaw up from the ground.

The woman in the booth smiled back at Sam and blew her a kiss.

“Sam?” Elle called.

“Yeah?”

“Problem?”

Sam turned to her sister. “Before we leave Amsterdam, we have to go shopping.”

Elle shook her head. “Poor Riley. He’s not going to know what hit him.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Sam said. “You don’t catch him off guard often.”

Elle glanced at the women in the windows. “That will do it. I know just the place. After we find Meijer.” Turning, still grinning, she continued down the alley.

Keeping his face forward, Joachim performed a walk-by near Satyr Dreams. Darkness filled the houseboat’s deck. His senses tingled with alertness the way they had since he was a boy and had first learned to break and enter back in Leipzig. Back then, stealing had been a way of survival. Forced entry was merely one of the skills he employed in his current vocation.

The houseboat was spacious but looked old. The fabricated metal exterior held pockmarks from hail and other abuse. Rocking on the waves from passing vessels, Satyr Dreams slapped against the side of the canal with quiet, hollow thuds.

He felt confident he could get inside.

At twelve he had started breaking into the homes of affluent people on the outer edges of the old neighborhood. That had been the year his father had been killed while trying to commit an armored car robbery. The Berlin Wall had fallen only a few years previously and West Germany was still working out the details of absorbing East Germany. The difference between the two countries’ economies had been like night and day. For a time, West German business had taken advantage of the East German labor pool, paying them only slightly more than they had already been getting paid. It wasn’t a good introduction to Western ways.

But crime had been good. Joachim’s father hadn’t been a bad man, just one who liked living easy and grew attracted to the danger of taking what he wanted. But he’d always been kind and gentle and soft-spoken. Until his father’s death, Joachim and his mother and sister hadn’t known his father had been a criminal.

Joachim’s mother had worked, but she hadn’t been able to make enough to keep a roof over their heads and feed them after her husband’s death. Joachim had tried to find a job, but no one wanted to hire a twelve-year-old boy and pay him enough to make up the difference his mother fell short on every month. In the end, he’d become a thief.

At first, Joachim had taken only food and small things he could trade for more food. Later, he had worked with a few partners and started stealing from corporate warehouses, targeting electronics and vehicles, moving into higher risk theft for a chance at a higher paycheck.

One night, one of his friends had been shot while they’d stolen a car. The boy had bled to death in the seat beside Joachim. The man Joachim had sold the stolen Mercedes to had docked the price for the blood on the seats. Joachim had been forced to dump his friend’s body in an alley as if it were common trash. He hadn’t been able to speak to his friend’s mother ever again.

Joachim knew the world wasn’t fair, and he’d quickly gotten harder to match it.

Since the age of fifteen, Joachim had been involved in organized crime. His mother had turned a blind eye to the money he’d brought into the house, and his sister had never known what he did. By the time he’d gotten old enough to get a legitimate job, he was too entangled to get out.

The people he did business with wouldn’t let him step out of their circle without paying a heavy price. They feared snitches.

Joachim had started as a numbers runner for Günter Stahlmann. At eighteen, Joachim had proven he could survive on the streets, and Günter promoted him to enforcer. For the next five years, Joachim had collected from habitual criminals who owed Günter money for sports bets and had tracked down those who had stolen from Günter. Joachim had been shot and stabbed on several occasions.

The last two years, though, he had graduated to a position of specialty assignments. The current assignment to Amsterdam came under that heading. Lately, Günter had managed a working arrangement with the mysterious woman who was currently calling the shots on the mission to capture Tuenis Meijer. Joachim didn’t know the nature of that arrangement, but he was paying careful attention.

Getting sent after Meijer couldn’t have happened at a worse time. Joachim was close to getting away from Günter for good. During the last year, pursuant to the agreement he’d made with the German police, Joachim had been steadily betraying his employer, easing out of the shackles of crime that had bound him for all these years. It hadn’t been an easy trick to accomplish. His life was currently several layers of lies deep.

But he desperately wanted out. Enough so to risk everything he had in the attempt.

Joachim stepped into the dark shadows that draped the houseboat. With a lithe coil of muscles, he leaped onto the rear deck. He tried the door, because he’d learned while collecting for Günter that doors weren’t always locked.

This one was.

It was also armed with an alarm.

Kneeling, Joachim pulled on a pair of thin surgical gloves and took out an electronic lock-pick kit from his pocket. Working quickly, he held a small pen-flash in his mouth for light and then cut into the alarm wiring. He bypassed the secondary alarm, then popped the plastic cover on the main alarm and connected the lock-pick’s alligator clips to the circuitry leading to the operating system. A quick tap on the electronic lock-pick device sent the digital readout scurrying to chase out the alarm code.

Less than a minute later, the readout flashed the eight-digit code. He pressed the activation button and the lock opened with a quiet snik.

Pocketing the electronic lock-pick, Joachim opened the door and went inside.

The boathouse smelled like the inside of a gym locker. Joachim breathed through his mouth. Evidently Tuenis Meijer spent his ill-gotten gains on sex and drugs but not on maids. He pulled the shades and played his pen-flash around.

It looked like a dirty clothes bomb had gone off inside the living area. Pizza boxes and fast-food containers littered every flat surface. The only thing that looked clean was the computer desk.

Joachim left the computer alone for the moment. During his time as a collector, he’d learned that people who used computers as their preferred weapons often left them booby-trapped. He wasn’t proficient in computer usage. Günter had other people for that.

His cell phone rang.

Taking it out, he opened it and said, “Yes.”

“Hey, kiddo,” Günter said in his deep voice. He was a large, broad man with a nose that had been broken many times and a thick shock of black hair only now going to gray. He liked American movies, particularly the crime dramas known as noir.

“Hey,” Joachim said. Neither of them used names. It was a practice of many years because they both knew their phone lines could be tapped at any time.

“How’s it going?” Günter asked.

“I’m still looking for our package.”

Günter sighed, and the sound was filled with all the sadness old Germany could muster. “I’m counting on you to pull this out, kiddo.”

“I will.” Quelling the unease that talking to Günter created, Joachim made a quick circuit of the galley. The clutter continued there. How can Meijer live like this?

Intrigued by the closet, Joachim tried to open the door. It was locked. He set the pen-flash on the galley table so the beam played over the door and he could free his hands. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he took out two lock-picks, shouldered the cell to his ear and knelt to work on the lock.

“I just want to warn you to stay on your toes,” Günter said.

“I am. I always do.”

“Don’t trust anybody over there.”

“I never do.” The lock clicked open.

“And you’ll let me know the instant you find the package?”

“Of course.” Joachim put the lock-picks away and pulled the closet door open. Once the lock was released, the door opened quickly, forced into frantic motion by the weight on the other side. Stepping back, Joachim reached for a long knife in the cutlery block on the galley table. The cell phone tumbled from his shoulder to the floor.

A man sprawled at Joachim’s feet, barely illuminated by the pen-flash’s wide beam.

Joachim brought the knife up smoothly, the blade positioned along his forearm so it wouldn’t easily be knocked from his grasp. The technique didn’t allow him to immediately stab an opponent, but he could slash an opponent’s face, hands, arms or stomach. Once an enemy started to bleed, it was only a matter of time till he succumbed.

The man at Joachim’s feet didn’t move.

Picking up his pen-flash, Joachim surveyed the man. A neat round bullet hole between the man’s eyes showed blue-black. A tiny streamer of blood zigzagged down his face.

“Hey, kiddo,” Günter called from the phone. “Hey.”

Senses flaring wildly, sensitive now to the rocking motion the houseboat made on the water, Joachim waited in the darkness. He fully expected to hear police sirens and helicopter rotors overhead.

“Hey,” Günter called out a little more strongly. “Can you hear me now?”

Moving slowly, making himself breathe and not bolt off the houseboat, Joachim scooped up the phone. “Yes.”

“What happened?”

Joachim shined the pen-flash down on the man’s face. His head rocked slowly back and forth with the houseboat’s motion.

“We have a problem,” Joachim said, struggling to keep himself calm. But he knew the problem was his. With everything so delicately balanced in his life, with all the lies he’d told, he felt certain that something had fallen through the cracks. He didn’t doubt for a moment that he’d just been set up. He could already feel the jaws of the trap springing closed on him.

Chapter 3

Elle’s mind buzzed as she rounded the corner of the alley and stepped onto the sidewalk. She automatically swept the street, looking for suspicious pedestrians, parked vehicles and passing cars. Nothing pinged the personal warning system she’d developed since becoming an intelligence agent.

Sam remained behind her, alert and ready. Remembering how they’d met in Berzhaan, how Sam had beaten her in an unarmed fight, Elle knew her twin could take care of herself. But the situation Elle was leading them into was doubtlessly going to turn ugly fast. She had a history with the man they were going to see.

“The place we’re going,” Elle said, “is going to be dangerous.”

“All right.” Sam never missed a beat or showed any sign of hesitation.

“The men we’re going to see are killers,” Elle continued. “Jan, the man we want to talk to, will have at least two bodyguards. The store he runs is a cover for his other business. He traffics in drugs and weapons, but he has a lot of contacts and knows a lot of things. Tuenis Meijer is someone he’ll know.”

“Good.”

“He may also try to kill me on sight.”

“Why?”

“A couple years ago, I cost him a major portion of his business and almost got him killed. I also put him in the hospital because I nearly burned his face off.”

“That would do it,” Sam said lightly.

Elle glanced at her sister. Sam looked a little tense. Then Elle focused on the street in front of her. She was feeling nervous herself. Jan wasn’t a good man to meet under any circumstance. The history they had made it worse.

For just a moment, Elle wondered why Sam wanted Meijer and what her twin wasn’t telling her. Elle didn’t like walking into operations without knowing everything that was going on. If it had been anyone else, she wouldn’t have been involved. But this was her sister. Family meant everything to Elle. Her parents, the people who had raised her and loved her, had taught her that.

She just hoped there would be no regrets and both of them would live through the experience.

They passed a small group of street hookers complaining in English, German and French about the slow business of the night, the weather and assorted personal problems. Pedestrian traffic flowed around them, barely slowed by even the most aggressive sales tactics.

The front of the shop that was the sisters’ destination held a large picture window garishly outfitted with provocatively attired mannequins sporting black leather, masks, whips, chains and furry handcuffs. Two of the kneeling mannequins had red ball gags in their mouths. Monitors played movies featuring paddling, restraints and degradation. Neon tubing advertised Sex Videos, Sex Aids and Fantasy Sex.

Elle went through the door without hesitation. The bell overhead rang to announce her arrival. Five people were inside. Jan stood behind the counter while his two bodyguards sat at a small table beside a rack of DVDs with covers that left nothing to the imagination. A young couple peered at a swing contraption made of leather and wood that Jan was showing them.

Jan was a thick-bodied man with a bored air. His dark hair was neatly clipped and gold chains hung around his neck. He wore a New York Yankees baseball jersey. As he looked up to greet them, recognition flared in his gray eyes.

“Hella,” Jan called in English, scrambling to reach under the counter. “Kill her.” Then he did a double take, seeing Sam behind Elle. “Kill them both.”

The scarlet neon from the tubing played over the burn scars on Hella’s face. He moved smoothly, showing years of practice. He was at least fifty, his hair white with age, smooth shaven like someone’s kindly grandfather. The coat slid away from the cut-down double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun hanging from a whipit sling on his right arm.

Elle ignored the bodyguards, trusting Sam to handle them. With the men spread out inside the sex shop, the danger was spread across two fronts.

Sam stepped toward Hella, got in close and blocked the man’s attempt to bring the weapon to bear on Elle, who was closing the distance on Jan. The shotgun erupted in a deafening blast. Neon light shimmered on the picture window as the concussive wave hammered the plate glass. The swarm of double ought buckshot cut a mannequin in half, blowing the top part off the bottom in a popcorn spray of hardened plastic.

The couple at the counter dove to the ground and covered their heads. The woman screamed hoarsely and didn’t stop.

Elle felt bad for them. They’d appeared a little embarrassed just to be in the sex shop, and the negative experience they were going through was partly her fault. But they’d provided the distraction she’d needed that allowed her to get close to Jan. Now the trick was to keep them safe. She didn’t want innocent blood on her hands. Even as she moved, she kept track of her sister, hating the fact that she was distracted. It wasn’t professional.

Sam put a hand on the top of the shotgun to push it down to the floor just as Hella discharged the second blast. Pellets tore holes in the linoleum and shredded leather outfits and rattled chains.

With the shotgun empty, Sam released the weapon, slid back, then delivered a snap-kick to the front of Hella’s knee, another to his crotch and—when the man bent over—a roundhouse kick to the face that drove him sideways.

By that time, Jan was bringing up the weapon he kept beneath the counter. Elle placed her hands on the countertop and vaulted over almost effortlessly. Balanced like a gymnast, she drove both feet into the center of Jan’s chest.

A painful explosion ripped from Jan’s lips as he stumbled back and slammed against the wall behind him. Shelves filled with sex toys tumbled down around him, but he fought his way back up, cursing vehemently. Elle landed on her feet and threw herself at Jan again, reaching for the weapon. She caught sight of Sam using Hella to block his partner’s efforts to get at her.

The second man had cleared his pistol and brought it up but couldn’t get a clear shot because Sam kept his partner between them. Moving quickly, Sam stepped around Hella and caught the man’s gunwrist with one hand while with the other she rammed the Y between her thumb and forefinger into the man’s throat. He hurked and dropped to his knees.

Shifting, Sam scooped up the fallen pistol. It was a Heckler & Koch .45, heavy and solid. Oil gleamed on the black metal barrel. She slid into a modified Weaver stance, left foot in front of the right, left palm cupped under her right palm.

Hella groped for the shotgun with one hand. He held two fresh shells from his jacket pocket in his other hand.

Voice calm, as if she were in situations like this all the time, Sam spoke in English, modeling Jan. “Touch the weapon and I will kill you.”

Evidently Hella believed her. His hand withdrew from the shotgun.

Elle stopped admiring Sam’s technique and fought Jan for the pistol. Although the man was larger than her, she maintained leverage over the weapon. If he got free, she knew Jan would kill her and Sam without a second’s hesitation. Unexpectedly, she broke the hold she had on the pistol and sunk in on Jan. She moved like an automaton, delivering devastating elbow and knee strikes in bruising syncopation. The style was Krav Maga, the close-in fighting katas often used by Israeli Mossad and special forces.

Jan stumbled back. For a moment, he dropped to the floor, then fought his way to his feet. The pistol bounced away. He reached for a wooden dowel on the wall behind him, part of the erotic swing kit he’d been showing the couple.

Elle reached into her pocket and pulled out a flick knife. Expertly, she flipped the weapon twice, baring the blade and locking the handle grips together, then drove the sharp point through Jan’s hand and impaled it on the wall. She didn’t even think about the pain she caused her opponent.

Her father had taught her to distance herself from such things. Pain was a tool she’d learned to use just as she’d learned to use weapons and martial arts. Many agents were too squeamish to use such tactics. In the beginning, Elle had felt a strong reluctance to employing measures like this, but time often meant lives. Her father had told her that.

On one mission, Elle had been with a senior agent who hadn’t used methods like this to get an answer quickly. The woman they had tried to save, a mother of two who’d been taken as a kidnap victim for ransom, had suffocated in a shallow grave before they reached her. It was a lesson Elle had never forgotten.

With a man like Jan, Elle never hesitated to go to extremes early. It saved time.

With a cry of pain, Jan stood as if transfixed. He swore in English and Dutch and French.

Not even breathing hard, Elle kept her hand on the knife handle. She distanced herself from her own emotions, going numb inside as her father had taught her. “Hurts, doesn’t it?” she asked.

Jan cursed at her.

Elle wiggled the blade and the man groaned, sagged against the wall, then pleaded with her to stop.

Elle spoke in English. “The last time you saw me, you swore that you would kill me.”

Face trembling in agony, Jan stared at her.

Still holding the knife, Elle said, “Now I’ll make you a promise. If you try to kill me again, I’ll kill you. It won’t matter what information I want from you. There are other places to get it.”

Blood ran along Jan’s arm and dripped to the floor. He blinked his eyes rapidly. “My hand,” he whispered.

“Not yet. For the moment, I like your hand where it is.” Elle closed her fingers around the knife handle.

“What do you want?” Jan whispered.

“A man named Tuenis Meijer.”

“Dmitri’s,” Jan gasped. “Try Dmitri’s. There’s a girl there that Meijer thinks he’s in love with.”

Silently, Elle pulled the knife from the wall. The man cradled his injured hand to his stomach and sank down on his haunches. He gave Elle a harsh look.

Squatting, Elle wiped the blade clean on Jan’s pant leg. He didn’t move to avoid her. “Don’t think about following me. Don’t think about warning Meijer I’m coming. Do you understand?”

Jan’s reluctance to be bullied into an answer lasted only a moment. “Yes. Yes, I understand.”

“Good,” Elle said. She stood and walked away. Her eyes met Sam’s briefly. “Are you ready?”

Sam had to try twice to speak. “Yes.”

She’s never seen anyone do something like that, Elle realized, recognizing the trauma in her twin’s eyes. Then she remembered that Sam was relatively new to the field. Not only that, she’d been primarily relegated to translating documents and hacking computer systems. She was good at fighting, but violence was still somewhat new to her. She hadn’t seen the things that Elle had.

Not knowing what to do or say to ease her twin’s discomfort, hoping that she hadn’t crossed a chasm that would permanently hurt their relationship, Elle led the way out of the shop and Sam followed.

The hunt was still on. Elle gave herself over to that.

“What is the matter?” Günter demanded at the other end of the phone connection.

Joachim stared down into the dead man’s face and struggled to remain rational and calm. Panic gnawed at him with small, rat’s teeth. “I found a body.”

“Is it the man you were sent for?”

Kneeling, Joachim shone the pen-flash down and went through the dead man’s pockets with his free hand. “No,” he answered. “Someone else.”

The dead man was easily ten years older than Tuenis Meijer but was just as shaggy and unkempt.

Joachim didn’t like surprises. They tended to upset his ability to handle a situation. Everything in him screamed to get off the houseboat.

Playing the pen-flash around, he examined the floor. Neither the weapon that had killed the man nor a spent casing was in sight. Further examination of the closet where the man had been concealed revealed that he’d met his end there. Blood and brain matter clung to the closet walls and pooled on the floor.

“I’ve got to call our contact,” Joachim said.

“Yes. Let me know how that goes.”

“I will.”

“And be careful, Joachim,” Günter said. “You are very important to me. I would not see you injured.”

A pang ripped through Joachim at the coming betrayal. Despite his murderous approach to his business and the long line of bodies that had led up to his current standing, Günter seemed to truly care about Joachim.

For months, Joachim had agonized over his decision to align himself against Günter. The crime czar had family and he was good to them, even though his daughters and sons didn’t appreciate the things he had done for them. Günter’s wife, ex-wives and mistresses only used him for what they could get. Günter hadn’t had good experiences related to family or friends. He didn’t trust many people.

But he trusted Joachim.

At fifteen, Joachim had been caught looting the home of a man who fenced stolen goods. That night, Günter had been with the man. The fence had wanted to shoot Joachim and call the Stasi. The East German police agency, with all the proper payments in place, would have condoned the decision because Joachim had been a thief and Leipzig had been filled with young thieves.

Only, Günter had liked the way Joachim had stood his ground and asked that his mother and sister be spared the details of his death. They didn’t know he was a thief. They’d believed he worked at odd jobs.

Günter had kept the fence from killing Joachim that night. The next night, he gave Joachim his first numbers-running assignment.

“I will be careful,” Joachim promised. He hung up the phone and reached for the third cell that he carried. His nerves jangled and the urge to run almost overcame him. He pressed numbers with his thumb and held the phone to his ear.

“Trouble?” a quiet, calm voice answered at the other end. Pitor Schultz was close to forty, a quiet man with dangerous eyes. Most people wouldn’t assume he was a threat until it was too late. For almost twenty years, he’d been an agent for the Bundesnachrichtendienst. The BND was Germany’s Foreign Intelligence Agency but they also operated inside the country when they had to.

“I’m going to send you a picture,” Joachim said. “If possible, I need the man in it identified.”

“All right. Send it.” Schultz hung up.

The BND agent’s ability to cut to the chase and ask only those questions that were pertinent was one of the things that made Joachim feel more secure about dealing with him. That and the fact that Schultz had been clever enough to catch him and compromise his freedom.

Joachim held the pen-flash on the man’s face and used the cell phone’s camera function to capture his image. A few buttons later, the image was on its way to Schultz.

Crossing to one of the houseboat’s windows, Joachim slid the heavy blinds out slightly and slowly, to peer outside. Passersby continued on their way without a glance in his direction. If a team was watching, Joachim couldn’t spot them.

He called Schultz’s number again.

“Yes?” the BND agent answered.

“You have the picture?”

“I do. I don’t know him. Is he connected to your present endeavor in any way?”

“Not that I’m aware of.” Restlessness filled Joachim. He wanted desperately to be out of the houseboat. It was a floating trap.

“Be careful,” Schultz advised.

Joachim ended the call and slipped the phone back in his pocket.

The dead man rolled slightly as the boat shifted. Since rigor hadn’t set in, Joachim knew the man hadn’t been dead long.

He took out the phone that connected him with the woman and punched the Send button. Schultz had tried tracking the number at one point, but it was carefully managed at the other end. A series of ever-changing cutouts made it seem as though the end connection was in several places in the United States, South America, the Caribbean, Russia and Asia.

“Do you have the target?” the woman asked.

“No. There’s been a problem.”

“There are not supposed to be any problems.” Her voice took on icy suspicion.

“This problem was here before I arrived,” Joachim replied. Anger stirred within him. “I found a dead man on the boat.”

A brief pause stretched between them. “Who?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What about your target?”

“Not here. The target could have been taken when this…other problem came up.”

“One thing at a time. Is the computer still there?”

Joachim glanced at the computer. “Yes.”

“Is it operational?”

“Give me a moment.” Crossing the room, Joachim pulled the computer tower out, slid the cover off and checked for antipersonnel mines. Finding nothing, he left the cover off and switched the machine on. Despite his search, he still grew tense as the computer powered up.

“Well?” the woman asked.

“It’s operational.”

“Good. Now here’s what you’re to do…”

Following the woman’s direction, Joachim settled in at the computer, opened up the high-speed Internet connection available through the houseboat’s satellite dish array and allowed her access to the computer from a remote site. She—or whoever worked for her at the other end of the connection—took control of the cursor and the computer’s functions.

“While this runs,” the woman said, “I need you to stay there and monitor the computer.”

“I’m not comfortable with that,” Joachim replied. “I’m exposed here.”

“You don’t have a choice,” she said coldly.

“I do.” Joachim stood.

“Leave before I say you can and I’ll make sure your mother, sister and niece don’t live to see the dawn.”

The threat hammered Joachim squarely between the eyes. The woman knew about his family. He was certain Günter had not told her. Whatever else Günter was, he wouldn’t expose his family or anyone else’s to danger. It only proved that the woman’s knowledge of Joachim went deep.

“All right,” Joachim said. He seethed inside. He’d moved his sister and mother to Munich so his and Günter’s enemies wouldn’t hurt them. “I’ll stay here until you’re finished.” Then, if you ever cross my path again, I’ll kill you.

Chapter 4

Dmitri’s Private Entertainment stood in the middle of one of the long alleys in the old side under an office building. The alley rode up a hill and the sex club was near the top. Recessed back under a tall building, a short flight of stairs led up to the establishment. The offices above were strictly low rent, but the sex club offered the promise of more exciting fare.

Dark red neon lights that blazed like coals spelled out Dmitri’s. Information about club hours was painted on the dark glass in English and Dutch. No cameras were allowed. It wasn’t a place she’d willingly have gone by herself. She didn’t feel comfortable with the prospect now.

But Elle showed no hesitation.

The club lobby was ornate, furnished with Old World splendor. Antique chairs and tables sat on either side of the room under soft nude photographs of women with tigers, in the show and lounging on high-performance cars. Freshcut flowers filled the vases on the tables. The whole package looked expensive and exotic. The two security guards in black suits added dangerous to the mix.

Elle fished money out of her pants pocket and paid the cover charge to the young woman at the desk inside the club’s lobby. “I’m looking for someone,” Elle said, catching the woman’s hand and curling the change up into her palm. The offer was evident.

The young woman considered the bills rolled up into her hand. “Perhaps,” she said, obviously desirous of the cash she was holding.

“A guest,” Elle said. “Not anyone who works here.”

Regretful reluctance filled the woman’s eyes. “Our clientele is most important, miss. I cannot abuse the trust that they—”

“Tuenis Meijer,” Elle went on.

Both security guards stood.

Sam turned slightly to address them. Her hand dropped to the bag containing the .45, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to use it to threaten them.

The hostess considered for a moment, then rolled her hand up to more tightly clutch the money. She waved the two security guards back into their chairs. “Some guests are more welcome than others.” She glanced at the LCD computer monitor built into the top of the desk. “In room nine. He’s awaiting Fatima.”

“Where’s room nine and who is Fatima?” Elle asked.

“Go through those doors.” The young woman pointed an elegantly nailed finger at the entrance to her left. “That gets you into the main room, where clients meet the girls. Stay to the left and go up the stairs. Room nine is marked at the landing. Fatima is one of the club employees. Tuenis Meijer has a special…interest in her. She’s not the first. I suspect she won’t be the last. He’s…impressionable.”

“Thank you.” Elle started for the ornate double doors. They didn’t open.

The hostess looked at her. “If anyone inside is harmed, you won’t make it back out of there.”

“Understood,” Elle said.

With a nod, the hostess tapped a sequence on the keyboard in front of her. The double doors unlocked with an electronic hum.

Raucous rock music from inside the room slammed into Sam as she followed Elle into the room. Furnished in more of the Old World furniture, primarily sofas and deep chairs, the sitting room looked large enough accommodate forty people. At present, most of the twenty-three there were scantily clad young women posing their wares for prospective clients. Some of those clients, Sam was surprised to see, were women.

With calm confidence, Elle led the way.

Sam followed with more trepidation. The club was a closed arena. The walls held no windows. She knew there had to be other ways out, but she didn’t know them. Elle didn’t appear daunted. Has she been here before? Sam wondered. There was so much she didn’t know about her sister.

The door to room nine was unlocked. Elle turned the knob and walked in.

Tuenis Meijer lay in the tangled scarlet silk bedclothes. Sam recognized the man from the digital images Alex and Allison had sent.

The computer expert was better groomed than he had been in most of the images. Shaggy hair shadowed his narrow, pinched face and he looked younger than his late thirties. Slightly built and maybe an inch or two taller than Sam, he didn’t look threatening. Especially while he was naked and had an expectant smile on his homely face.

The smile wilted as he surveyed his two visitors.

“You’re not Fatima.” Tuenis reached down to pull the sheet up to his neck.

“No,” Elle agreed. She took his clothes from the folding butler and tossed them to him. “Get dressed.”

“What?”

“Dress,” Elle said. “Now. Or I’m going to hurt you.”

With a single jerk, Elle tore the sheet from the computer expert’s naked body. He yelped in embarrassment and dove for his clothes.

Sam’s silence bothered Elle. At the train station, her sister had seemed glad to see her, even though the present assignment had hung over both of them. Now, Sam seemed a million miles away. It was more than a little unsettling.

From Dmitri’s, Elle led the way to Achterburgwal Canal and flagged down a water taxi. The pilot didn’t ask about Tuenis Meijer, who had sat between them with his hands taped behind him. In Amsterdam, Elle knew from past experience, only the ordinary seemed to attract attention after dark.

They left the water taxi only a short distance from Rusland Street where the houseboat was moored. According to Sam’s information and Tuenis’s very believable honesty, he lived there alone.

“What’s bothering you?” Elle asked. She spoke in Russian because it wasn’t a language Tuenis was reputed to know.

For a moment, Sam continued on in silence. “Tonight didn’t go as I’d planned.”

“You have the man you came to get.”

“This should have been simple.”

“It was,” Elle argued. How could her sister not think tonight’s activities were anything but simple?

“We got into a gunfight in a sex shop.”

“How would you have gone about getting our guest, then?” Elle asked.

After a few steps, Sam admitted, “I don’t know.”

“You said time was of the essence.”

Reluctantly, Sam nodded. “It is. But I know a simple retrieval op shouldn’t be as high profile as this one has been.” She paused. “Obviously you have your own way of working, Elle, but it’s not my way. It’s not what I feel was warranted in this situation.”

Elle stopped and stopped Tuenis as well. She held on to the man’s elbow possessively. Tuenis shrank away, as if afraid he was about to be ripped apart.

“You’ve never been to Amsterdam before,” Elle accused. “You don’t know how things are done here.”

Sam said nothing.

Her sister’s silence infuriated Elle. How could she stand there so calmly and make no response? “Couldn’t your agency have sent someone more experienced in this area?”

“I was asked to pick up Tuenis by Alexandra Forsythe and Allison Gracelyn,” Sam said.

Elle matched the names from stories she’d shared with Sam. “They’re both from Athena Academy.”

“Yes.” Sam sipped a breath.

Trusting people was hard for Sam. Elle understood that. Though Sam had grown up in the more affluent American world, her life had been lacking in so many ways that Elle’s hadn’t been. Knowing that allowed Elle to be patient.

“Something came up in an investigation they were conducting,” Sam said. “Several files involving blackmail schemes were all grouped together under a folder headed Spider.”

A surge of excitement rattled through Elle. The SVR had its own Spider files involving blackmail and payoffs as well as political corruption.

“Allison managed to track some of the Web activity back to a domain hosted and operated by Tuenis,” Sam went on. “I’m supposed to bring him in.”

“Without CIA backing?” Elle shook her head. “How are you supposed to do that?”

“Allison is working on that,” Sam replied. “If we hadn’t basically abducted Tuenis, I was hoping to talk him into accompanying me.”

“Or getting into his hard drive and Web space,” Elle finished.

“There’s something else, too,” Sam said.

“What?” Elle wasn’t happy now. She was certain her mood matched her sister’s.

“One of the files that Alex and Allison pulled had to do with our parents.”

A wave of uncertainty and fear filled Elle. Their parents, their lives and their deaths, remained mysteries to her though she had looked at their files. Despite her attempts at acceptance and her adoptive father’s apologetic reassurances that she wouldn’t ever know what had happened to them, she still longed to know. “What about our parents?”

“All the files were encrypted and coded,” Sam explained. “It takes time. Allison is working on breaking the encryption and code. She thought perhaps she would have it broken by the time I got back. As soon as she knows, she’ll tell me.” She caught herself and rephrased her answer. “Us.”

Turning, Elle gazed at the houseboat only a short distance away. “You also want access to Tuenis’s records aboard the houseboat, then, right?”

“Or to acquire access to them from his machine long enough to copy them,” Sam agreed.

At that moment, the iPAQ in Elle’s jacket went off. She took the PDA from her jacket and consulted the flashing screen.

“It’s a silent alarm,” Tuenis said. “I have it tied to the boat’s computer wifi. Someone has broken into the boat.”

Elle made the decision. She pushed the iPAQ into Sam’s hands. “Let me borrow the pistol you commandeered.”

Without hesitation, Sam handed the weapon to her. “Be careful,” Sam added.

But Elle was already in motion, striding toward the houseboat.

Chapter 5

Pulling Tuenis into motion, Sam walked to a position beside a forty-foot yacht moored at the side of the canal. She immediately attracted the attention of the boat’s security officer, but he remained at the railing twenty feet away.

For a moment, Sam saw Elle slinking through the shadows along the canal, then her sister was gone—vanished into the darkness provided by the boats tied to cleats. Party music—industrial, techno and old-fashioned rock and roll—thundered from the nearby boats and from clubs that dotted the area. Amsterdam was proving louder by night than by day.

“Who are you people?” Tuenis asked.

“Quiet,” Sam snapped. The thought of Elle encountering whoever was on the boat by herself didn’t rest easy. Maybe Elle had more experience with the city, but she wasn’t invincible.

“Are you guys criminals or government?” Tuenis asked.

Sam silenced the man with a sharp glance. “Another word,” she promised, “and I’ll tie you to an anchor and heave you into the canal.”

Tuenis nodded weakly.

Sam took her cell phone from her pocket. Chipped for international use, the phone also had a GPS locator. The global positioning satellite system accessed at least twelve of the twenty-four satellites in fixed orbit around Earth at any time.

She punched in Riley McLane’s number and waited.

Riley answered on the second ring. “Miss me?” he asked, and she could hear the mocking grin in his voice.

“Yes.”

“Look, I’ve been thinking,” Riley said, “I shouldn’t have gotten angry the way I did. I know that—”

“I need help,” Sam interrupted.

Riley paused.

“At least, I may need help.”

“What do you need me to do?” he asked.

That was one of the things Sam loved about Riley. He was more talkative and chatty than she was, and more willing to reveal his feelings—maybe even more certain about how he felt—but he knew when to listen.

“Can you access a satellite view of my position?”

“Yes. Give me a minute.”

Tensely, Sam waited in the shadows.

Elle crept close to Satyr Dreams, then put a hand on the houseboat. As a water taxi sped by, she ducked to avoid the splash of light that ran along the vessel’s gunwales.

Getting the rhythm of the houseboat, she leaned her body weight on the side and pulled herself over as it rocked on the wave. Lithely, she rolled to her feet and flattened beside the stern door. A quick glance at the security system told her it had been bypassed.

Holding the H&K .45 in her left hand, Elle eased the safety off and put her hand on the door to test it.

It was unlocked.

Readying herself, Elle raised the gun and swung into position just inside the door.

The soft blue-white glow of a computer monitor filled the bedroom. Data streamed across the screen.

And the illumination fell across the dead man lying in the middle of the floor. She knew exactly what the black dot in the center of the man’s forehead was.

Silently, a shadow separated itself from the darkness. Only motion gave her attacker away. She pulled the gun up and fired. The pistol kicked back against her palm as the weapon’s silenced “cough” wheezed into the houseboat cabin.

Inside the room, a man cursed in surprise.

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

Standing in the ops mission control room, Riley McLane stared at the images on the wall screens. He was a little over six feet tall and dressed in a brown turtleneck and tan slacks. Although he was currently riding a desk job, he wore his pistol in shoulder leather. His wavy black hair hung just above his eyebrows. His cheeks were smooth, freshly shaven.

Amsterdam. What the hell are you doing in Amsterdam, Sam? The question chafed at him.

The mission control room was quiet except for the hum of the computers and electronic equipment. Occasionally whispered conversations over the headset reached his ears.

“C’mon, Tolliver,” Riley coaxed. “This connect isn’t going to take all night, is it?”

“No.” Tolliver was young and intense. He kept his hair trimmed to baby-chick down that was golden yellow. Round-lensed glasses reflected the wallscreen. His fingers flew knowingly across the keyboard, then he hit a final sequence and leaned back. “We’re in.”

The view on the center four screens changed, opening up on a night view of a canal in a busy metropolitan area. Sam’s phone GPS showed up as a pulsing orange dot.

“Can you get closer to Special Agent St. John?” Riley struggled to keep the tension out of his voice.

“I’m on it.” Tolliver worked the keyboard again and brought up a closer image. “You are going to get permission for the use of this spy satellite, aren’t you, Special Agent McLane?”

“You bet.” Riley would, of course. But it wouldn’t be permission he was seeking. Rather, it would be forgiveness. In the spy trade, he’d learned that it was often more productive to everyone involved to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Permission usually never came, and forgiveness was generally around the corner and most of the time no later than the next presidential election.

Sam stood in the shadows of a tree along the canal. Riley could tell from his lover’s posture that she was worried. He wished he could put his hand on the wallscreen and touch her.

“Start capturing images, Tolliver,” Riley said. Although he was more inclined to fieldwork, Riley was also being groomed as a handler. He didn’t want to come in from the violent world that he loved, and felt that he could do the most good in the trenches, but he knew that sooner or later he would be forced to do it.

Tonight, however, he was thankful he was in a position to help Sam. He clicked over to Sam’s phone connection. “I’m here.”

Tolliver worked quickly, downloading image after image and saving it off to a file.

“I’m here with Elle,” Sam said. “She’s in a houseboat about two hundred feet southeast of my position. Farther along the canal.”

Covering the mouthpiece with a hand, Riley said, “Back out. There’s a houseboat on the canal. A second agent is aboard.”

“What agent?” Tolliver clicked the keys and the view backed out. The houseboat came into focus.

“It’s a need-to-know, Tolliver. Just acquire the images.”

“Yes, sir.”

Riley didn’t want to have to explain how Sam happened to be in Amsterdam with her twin sister, who happened to be an excellent Russian spy. He had no clue himself.

“What am I looking for, Sam?” Riley asked.

“Someone broke into the houseboat,” Sam answered. “Elle went to find out who.”

“Is the person or persons still there?”

“I don’t know.”

Riley heard the irritation and frustration in Sam’s voice. As carefully guarded as she was with her emotions, he doubted many people would have noticed. “What are you working?”

“Private business.”

“For the school?” Riley knew from recent experience that Athena Academy graduates had a tendency to operate quietly in the background to deal with their own issues.

“There’s no time to talk about it now.”

Shelving his irritation, Riley studied the screen, finding Elle standing beside the houseboat’s stern door just as the woman moved out of the shadows. An instant later, a quick illumination flared into being, then just as quickly disappeared.

“That was a gunshot,” Tolliver said.

“I know.” Tension swirled inside Riley. He knew the flash indicated a weapon had been fired. He’d spent years out in the field. “Does Elle have a weapon, Sam?”

Joachim didn’t get a good look at the woman as she came through the door. He’d gone after her immediately, hoping to catch her by surprise. Instead, she’d caught him almost flat-footed by firing so quickly. There had been no hesitation. Whoever she was, she intended to kill him.

He twisted as he saw her hands shift. The bullet grazed his chest, sliced through his shirt and pulled at his jacket as it ripped through. Another inch or two and he’d have been a dead man. He wrapped both hands around the woman’s and forced the pistol from his direction.

She fired again, and the muzzle flash ripped through the cottony darkness. The bullet slapped low into the wall behind him, letting him know she was a pro because she was firing at the center of his mass rather than panicking for a head shot.

In the next handful of seconds, Joachim found out he had a hellcat on his hands. Her elbows and knees lifted, crashing into his body rapidly, going for his crotch and his face—softer tissue areas. He maintained his lock on her hands, then swept her feet from under her and fell on top of her, knocking the breath from her with his weight. He was more than a foot taller than her and had her by at least a hundred pounds. She shouldn’t have given him much trouble. But she did.

He made the mistake of lifting his head to look at her and identify her. She responded by crashing a forearm into his nose and left eye. Blinding pain screamed through his head and he lay on top of her again, somehow managing to knock the pistol away.

“Stop,” he said. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

“Like you didn’t hurt the guy on the floor?” She continued struggling, but—for the moment, at least—he had her arms pinned.

“I didn’t kill him.”

She went still. “Then let me up.”

Cautiously, Joachim lifted his head and looked at her. With the blue monitor glow washing over her, he saw that she was one of the blond women he’d met earlier at Central Station. Not only that, she was the one he’d been so intrigued by. Almost instantly, he grew aware of how her body lay pressed under his. Before he knew it, his body responded and he was pressing with more than he’d intended.

He didn’t know what surprised him more: that the woman was the one from Central Station, that his body could react so quickly under the circumstances…or that she arched her back and headbutted him in the face.

Bright pain ignited inside Joachim’s skull. If his nose wasn’t broken, he was going to be further surprised. Blood dripped into his vision from a cut over his left eye.

He cursed.

“You,” she accused. Those beautiful ice-blue eyes widened in shock.

Shifting, straddling her uncomfortably now with his excitement hard against her belly, Joachim held her wrists and sat up. He looked down at her. “What are you doing here?”

“You were following us.”

“How could I be following you if I got here in time to kill that man before you did?” he asked.

Another thought occurred to Joachim. “Where’s your sister?”

She glared at him.

Joachim growled a curse. “Don’t play games. That could get your sister killed. There are worse people out tonight than me.”

Sam waited anxiously after the muzzle flash. Riley’s question kept wriggling through her mind. Does Elle have a weapon?

Then the second muzzle flash blazed to life inside the houseboat.

“What’s going on?” Tuenis asked.

For a moment, Sam considered releasing the man and going to her sister’s aid. With luck, they could find Tuenis again. Then Riley spoke into her ear over the phone.

“Sam, you’ve got trouble.” His voice was deadly calm. “Three men—no, four men are closing on the houseboat. You’ve got to get out of there.”

Instinctively, Sam pulled Tuenis back into the shadows with her. She scanned the street with her peripheral vision, not trying to see the men, just opening her vision up to spot approach patterns.

Two of the men came into view at once. Both men were unknown to her, but both moved liked predators closing in for the kill. A moment later, she spotted the third and fourth. All of them converged on the houseboat.

“Who are they?” Sam asked.

“I thought you could tell me,” Riley replied.

“No.” Desperate, Sam glanced around and spotted a small seventeen-foot speedboat moored behind the yacht. The canal was the fastest way out of the area. She pushed Tuenis into motion. “Move,” she ordered.

At her direction, Tuenis clambered into the speedboat. Their movement had attracted the attention of the four men, temporarily freezing them in place. By that time, Sam had cast off the lines to the mooring cleats. She jumped to the wheel and reached below, jerking out wires to hotwire the boat. It felt like years before the engine fired, and she shoved the throttle forward and cut the wheel sharply. The speedboat powered out into the canal, bumping against the yacht ahead of it and drawing a string of curses. A water taxi sped by, missing her by inches. She kept the throttle buried and headed for the houseboat.

No more muzzle flashes came from within. Sam wondered who was left alive and prayed she hadn’t lost the sister she’d so recently found.

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