“Not a request,” Vestavia said, earning a glare from Ostrovsky.

“I need to know the timing immediately,” Bardaric demanded.

“When you have the targets,” Vestavia said, indicating the U.S. cities Bardaric wanted to take down, “we’ll discuss the details by teleconference with all seven.”

Ostrovsky nodded.

Bardaric shifted his shoulders in a dismissive motion. “Beats jet lag.”

The prick had every reason to be confident. The Council of Seven would very likely approve the destruction of three U.S. cities since the plan to put a Fratelli in the White House last year had busted. The mole behind that failure was racking up a debt their death wouldn’t pay.

“Fra Vestavia?” Cayle Seabrooke, the young man Gwen had introduced Vestavia to before the meeting, came walking up.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry we didn’t get the chance to talk more tonight.” Cayle handed him a card. “Here’s my contact information. I’d like to work with you.”

Wentworth and several Fratelli had highly recommended the guy. Cayle had gray eyes that reminded Vestavia of a wolf on the hunt, always watching for prey or a threat to his territory. The scar slashed across his right cheek fit the lethal edge waiting beneath his veneer of civility.

Vestavia took the card. “Be in Miami tomorrow. I’ll call.” He walked to the Range Rover where Linette sat quiet as a mute and climbed in next to her. Once the door was shut, he pressed the button to raise the privacy glass behind the driver and told her, “Set up a meeting in Miami for tomorrow morning.”

She reached into the briefcase at her feet and pulled out a laptop she booted up. “Who is to attend, Fra?”

“My two southeast lieutenants and you.”

She stopped typing. “Am I to actually be in the meeting?”

“Yes. It’s time we put another female lieutenant in the field. You’ll be a part of our next mission.”

Having a new lieutenant in the field would be instrumental in helping him locate the mole.

Chapter Fifteen

Do you have some aversion to traveling like a normal person?” Abbie shouted at Hunter over the sound of the retreating helicopter, which was turning into a speck of light in the moonless night. Didn’t the pilot wonder about dropping two people in the middle of nowhere?

In the middle of freezing-ass nowhere.

Really. This place might not have a zip code for another decade.

They were in mountains and she’d seen snow-tufted trees all around this open patch when the spotlight under the helicopter had swept the frozen terrain right before they landed. The temperature had to be in the low thirties or upper twenties.

“Move over here.” Hunter’s voice came through the dark quiet as a spirit but with the bite of a general’s order.

“Like I can see where you’re talking about?” She couldn’t see the frost that had to be coming out her mouth. “Don’t you have some kind of light and hand warmers and-”

His fingers cupped her arm.

She jumped. And screeched.

“Who’d you think had touched you?” He held on to her arm but didn’t try to move her.

Did he have to make her feel like an idiot? She was in the dark, pitch dark. Blacker than a bottomless pit.

Like the night she got lost in the dark and cried until her dad found her.

Tears were justified at six years old.

Not at twenty-nine.

She would not let him know how close she was to losing it. There were scarier things in life, like not ever seeing her mother again. “Can I call my mother’s doctor now?”

“No tower out here either. We’ll try as soon as we find one. I told you it might be tomorrow before you could call again. That’s why I let you talk to the hospital while we were landing.”

He sounded so reasonable at times she wanted to scream. He’d only let her talk for a minute when the call went through. The hospital staff had said her mother was resting comfortably tonight. Abbie trusted Dr. Tatum to take good care of her.

Hannah wouldn’t leave their mom alone, but Abbie would never hear the end of it if she didn’t call Hannah soon.

And Dr. Tatum. He might have an idea of someone else for Abbie to talk to at the Kore Women’s Center. She wished he’d been at the hospital when she’d called. Even if Dr. Tatum picked up the voice mail Hunter allowed her to leave, he had no way to reach her. She didn’t have a phone and Hunter wouldn’t share his number.

Hunter tugged a little to get her stepping forward, then hooked his arm around her waist to guide her several more steps. How could he see anything? “Be careful. Don’t move or you could fall and hurt yourself. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait.” Maybe she should let him know she had a limit when it came to terror and she had been pushed over the top too many times in the last twelve hours. “Don’t leave me in the middle of the woods in the dark. Something might attack me.”

“Not unless it’s deaf. Could you hold it down some?”

“Who could possibly be here?” she shouted. Was he serious?

The quick shush of air that blew past her ear sounded like a fiery sigh. Maybe a tired sigh.

She’d never been a nag and didn’t care for coming across like one now, but it was damn cold and pitch-freakin’-black. “Sorry, I just can’t see anything.”

“That’s why I told you not to move.” He said each word carefully, as though she had stepped on his last good nerve.

Her patience had been ground to bits over the past hour and a half, too.

She’d fallen asleep on the jet’s sofa while waiting on him to return from the cockpit so she could demand he tell her the truth about having met her.

She had never begged a man to take her home for a night.

How would any woman not remember sleeping with Hunter?

Besides, even if she was the kind of woman who habitually jumped into the beds of strange men, Hunter might fit her physical criteria, but he was cold as a stone inside.

He hadn’t even come back to finish their conversation before landing, just sent the flight attendant with this gargantuan flight suit and orders from Hunter to put it on.

When Abbie hesitated, the flight attendant had given her the last of his message. “This is your ten-minute warning to get dressed. You’re leaving in whatever you’re wearing when we land.”

The jet touched down at a small airport with one hangar, a single-level brick building and a barely lit runway. Less than a minute after landing, Hunter rushed her from the cozy jet to a waiting helicopter that was one degree warmer than a refrigerator.

The same helicopter that dumped her in this godforsaken hole.

“Abbie?”

She might be cranky, but who wouldn’t be at this point? “What?”

“Are you going to stand still when I leave you?”

“What country am I in?”

He muttered something that sounded four-letter short. “United States.”

“What city?”

“TMI for now. The sooner you let go of me the sooner we’ll get out of here.”

She didn’t realize she’d been clutching his arm. She let go and tried to stick her hands in her pockets, but those were somewhere around her knees. “Why can’t I go with you? Where are you going?”

“To. Get. Our. Vehicle.”

If his face looked anything like his voice sounded he was grinding his jaw muscles.

Transportation. That raised her comfort level. “Okay, I’ll wait… maybe. Unless I hear something.”

He didn’t say a word.

“Do you have matches or something that lights up, like maybe a key light… or… something?” she asked, her voice trailing off in the silence. She hated to feel afraid. Just pissed her off.

“Where’d you grow up?”

“Southern Illinois.”

“On a farm, right?”

“Yes. What of it?” She hadn’t forgotten his snobbish “no” when she’d asked him if he owned a farm.

“Isn’t that out in the country?”