Point Of No Return. Susan May Warren

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СКАЧАТЬ him, Lis. I’ll find Joshy.”

      When Lissa spoke again, Mae heard the confidence, the trust that she’d always found so painfully suffocating—and today, terrifying. “I know you will, Mae.”

      Mae hung up. Stared at the phone. Shoot. She hated this part.

      I love you, Mae. But I don’t want you to work for me.

      You mean you don’t want me in your life, she’d said.

      She would never forget his steady, dark-eyed stare, or the rawness in his expression.

      Nor the hurt on his face when she’d dumped her drink over his head and walked away.

      She only gave herself another moment’s debate before breaking all her promises to herself and dialing the man who’d nose-dived her life.

      Her heart.

      Chet Stryker.

      As with every mission Chet Stryker had ever accepted, he did his homework, armed himself with the latest technology, contemplated every strategy and embraced whatever character his assignment demanded.

      “I really hate tulle,” he said, as he exited through the security gates of Hans Brumegaarden’s expansive estate in his Snow White costume. The sun had long ago abandoned the day, and a sprinkling of stars barely outshone the lights of Berlin.

      “It does tend to snag on your ankle holster,” Brody “Wick” Wickham said, hoisting his overnight bag of supplies—ammunition, a Heckler and Koch submachine gun, a couple of Glocks and various high-tech surveillance equipment—over his shoulder, his bad mood etched on his craggy face. “I could use a night at the Hyatt.”

      Chet didn’t blame him. His elite security team had spent five hours in the late summer sun dressed as Grumpy, Sleepy and Sneezy. Lucky him, as the team leader, Chet had landed the role of Snow White.

      He had to be the laughingstock of the international-security community. Apparently, if anyone needed a decorated, former Delta Force operative with ten years of undercover experience and his team of highly trained specialists to impersonate fairy-tale characters, Chet Stryker was their man.

      He’d wanted to run Stryker International on his terms. With his choice of assignments.

      But clearly pride wouldn’t pay the bills. And they had accomplished their mission—to protect six-year-old Gretchen Brumegaarden and one hundred of her closest friends and family members from a terrorist threat. Still, it felt like a compromise. He needed to do everything he could to make his little company a success, hoping to convince himself that he hadn’t blown everything when he’d retired early from the military.

      Since the day he’d kicked Mae out of his life, it seemed he’d made one glaring mistake after another.

      “We’re taking the midnight train back to Prague,” Chet said, pressing the automatic unlock on their economy rental car.

      “No airplane?” Artyom, his computer techie from Russia, ran to catch up, toting his own provisions, most of them contained in his laptop case. He’d been recruited by Wick, a former Green Beret whom Chet had enticed to leave special ops after a particularly brutal tour. Chet’s business partner Vicktor—a former FSB agent—had closed the deal, talking Artyom into joining Stryker International. Luke Dekker, former Navy SEAL, acted as medic and team explosives expert. Now all Chet needed was a profiler, perhaps a negotiator, and, yes, a pilot.

      He still hadn’t found someone as skilled as Mae. Not even close. He’d been setting his sights lower and lower, until he was looking at recruits fresh out of a bush pilot school in Alaska. He needed Mae. But every time he opened his phone to call her, his chest would burn, old wounds stirring to life, and he’d shut his phone and the image of her from his mind.

      He wouldn’t—couldn’t—put someone he loved in the line of fire. Been there, done that.

      Chet opened the trunk and threw in the gear. “No airplane. This check barely covers our expenses and salaries for the next month. An airplane means another dwarf suit in your near future.”

      Chet needed a break, something to put his business on the map. Something big, international and newsworthy.

      Maybe even something to make him feel like a soldier, a patriot, again. Anything but a cartoon character playing a charade.

      The wind blew against the ancient elm trees ringing the property, picking up his rather un-Snow-White scent. “Let’s get out of here.”

      His cell phone vibrated as he opened the car door. Fishing it out of his pocket, he looked at the number—and stilled.

      “You drive, Wick.” Chet tossed him the keys, walked over to the passenger side and opened the phone. “Chet here.”

      “It’s…me.”

      “I know.” Wow, did he know, because just like that, everything he’d felt that day when he’d met Mae Lund—the longing, the hope, even the delight—rushed back and took a swipe at his voice. He found it, although it emerged a little roughed up as he turned from the car. “How are you, Mae?”

      “Not so good.” Was there a tremor in her voice?

      “What is it?”

      “It’s my nephew, Josh. He’s missing.”

      “Then call the police.”

      “He’s in Georgia.”

      “I’m not sure what I can do from here—”

      “Georgia, the country!” Her voice resounded loud and clear, and on the edge of desperate, despite being on the other side of the world. Uh, she was on the other side of the world, right? “Where are you?”

      “Getting on a plane in Seattle.”

      “Let me guess—to Prague.”

      Silence. Then, “No, to Georgia. Why would I come to Prague?”

      Wow, that hurt, more than he would have ever guessed. Because for a second he’d been hoping, wildly perhaps, that she’d forgotten how he’d stomped her pride into tiny bits, and instead remembered that once upon a time he really cared what happened to her. What she thought about. What food she liked and what movies she saw. What her dreams were…outside the ones that included the rather negative byproduct of him watching her die, that was.

      “You’re going to Georgia?”

      “Where else would I be going, Chet? Honolulu? My nephew is missing, and I speak Russian, which means I can probably get by, thanks to the years of Russia occupation. My sister is losing her mind, and I think I can find him. I know he was working near Gari…in a village called Burmansk.” Her voice dropped. “I was hoping that…maybe…oh…never mind.”

      “Wait!” Don’t hang up. “You want me to find him?”

      “No. I can find him. I was hoping you could tap into your contacts in Georgia to help me.” Her voice dropped.

      “You know the ones.”

      “Yes, СКАЧАТЬ