Top Gun Guardian. Carol Ericson

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      Raven snorted. “Smooth move, Garrett.”

      The agent slumped forward, banging his head on the table. With her heart thumping, Raven stumbled to his side. She clutched his forearm through the dark material of his suit jacket. “Garrett?”

      Was he fooling around? Raven swallowed hard. Secret Service agents didn’t fool around, especially Garrett Hansen.

      “Is he sick?” Malika hugged her doll to her chest, her eyes round with fear.

      Raven’s gut twisted. Malika had lost her mother in the war to establish Burumanda. The kid had witnessed a lot of death and destruction in her short lifetime.

      Death? Garrett had probably just eaten something that didn’t agree with him.

      Raven slid her hand to his wrist, where she felt a pulse pumping away. “Garrett, are you okay?”

      She patted his clammy cheek and his head rolled to the side, his mouth gaping open. With shaky fingers, Raven fumbled in the pocket of her slacks for her cell phone. Should she call 911, Walter, the Secret Service?

      Closing her eyes, she blew out a breath. She’d start with the bodyguards standing sentry on the other side of the doorway.

      She tripped to the door of the anteroom and swung it open. The two burly Burumandan guards were carbon copies of Garrett, slumped sideways in their chairs.

      Adrenaline zinged through Raven’s system and she backpedaled away from the empty hallway leading toward the General Assembly. Unless the three men had all eaten the same lunch, this was no coincidence.

      Noise from the closed-circuit TV erupted, and Raven spun around to see Malika clap one hand over her mouth. Gunfire.

      “They are shooting at my father.”

      Raven peered at the screen and the frantic figures darting around the General Assembly. She glanced at the doorway gaping open, and clenched her jaw. Shots fired in the General Assembly at President Okeke. His daughter’s bodyguards passed out cold. She loved shoes but didn’t plan to stick around and wait for the third one to drop.

      Raven strode back toward the door, slammed it shut and locked it. Crouching next to the inert form of Garrett, she slipped her hand inside his jacket. She lifted the gun from his shoulder holster and released the safety. She gave silent thanks to her ex-fiancé and his buddies from the covert ops team, Prospero, for teaching her how to shoot. She’d been great at target practice, but she’d never had to shoot at a moving target and never once to save her life…or someone else’s.

      A cacophony of voices and a stampede of footsteps echoed on the other side of the door. Raven froze, her gaze glued to the slowly turning door handle. Finding it locked, somebody rapped on the door. With what sounded like the butt of a gun.

      At this point, she had no idea whom to trust. She swept her handbag from the back of the chair. She nudged Malika, rooted in front of the TV, her doll dangling from her fingers. “Let’s go. And get a grip on that doll.”

      Malika whimpered and folded her arms across her belly, shooting a glance at the door, still under assault from someone on the other side.

      “Don’t worry. We’re not going that way. Why do you think they put you in here in the first place?”

      Raven crept across the room and pressed a panel with her palm. She felt the spring give beneath her hand and she slid the panel to the side, where an opening yawned in the wall. She turned and gestured at Malika.

      The girl tiptoed toward the wall and jumped at a particularly loud thump on the door. Raven grabbed her arm and pulled her through the opening. She slid the panel back into place and tucked Malika behind her. Pressing her ear against the wall, she put a finger to her lips.

      Malika wrapped one arm around Raven’s waist and trembled against her back. Raven straightened her spine to give them both a little confidence.

      The door on the other side burst open with the sound of splintering wood. Raven held her breath as the blood pounded in her ears. Friend or foe?

      “Where are they? I thought you said they were in here.”

      Raven flinched at the sound of a sickening thud of flesh against hard wood. Garrett’s head?

      “Obviously they were in here. That’s why he’s here.”

      Accents. One German, one French.

      “Maybe they’re still here.”

      Malika’s grip tightened, squeezing the breath from Raven.

      “We don’t have time to search. Once the pandemonium subsides and they try to raise their comrade here on his radio, they’ll be crawling all over the place.”

      “We can’t afford not to search. We need the girl.”

      With shaky hands, Raven slipped her high heels from her feet. She tapped Malika on the head with the toe of one shoe and pointed toward the set of stairs that disappeared into the darkness.

      If the two men started banging around out there, Raven had no intention of waiting until they discovered the hollow cavity in the wall. She didn’t have a clue as to the meaning of this assault, but she knew danger when it stared her in the face. Two years working as a translator with Prospero in the Middle East had taught her that.

      She laced her fingers with Malika’s and guided her down the steps. She had to hand it to the little girl. The minute Raven had given the command to go, Malika had performed like a champ—no tears, no tantrums, just flight.

      They crept down the stairs and reached a door. “Hold it.” Raven held up her hand. Turning the tarnished metal handle, she eased open the door and peeked into the deserted hallway. She crooked her finger at Malika to follow and then tiptoed into the open space, feeling exposed and vulnerable.

      Raven hated feeling vulnerable.

      Her grip on Garrett’s gun tightened as she pulled Malika close to her side. They sidled along the wall. Raven had spent plenty of time in this building and knew exactly where they were. She also knew the location of a janitor’s closet nearby.

      She had the overwhelming sense that she needed to keep Malika under wraps. Anyone could be out there now. She didn’t even know if President Okeke was dead or alive.

      Reaching the closet door, Raven pulled it open and shoved Malika inside the small space crowded with brooms, mops and buckets.

      Raven whispered. “We’re going to stay here for a while until I can figure out what’s going on.”

      In the darkness, Malika scooched in closer to Raven, who could feel the trembling of the small girl’s body. She slipped an arm around Malika and squeezed her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay. Do you understand?”

      Malika nodded, tickling Raven’s chin with her hair. Then she slipped her sticky hand in Raven’s. Why did kids always have dirty hands? Raven curled her fingers around Malika’s.

      Despite the recent turn of events, maybe President Okeke had the right idea bringing his daughter along. It beat stashing her with some nanny or shoving her into СКАЧАТЬ