She screamed.
His eyes glinted, his face suddenly a demonic shadow as he hovered above her. His free hand flashed toward her throat, wrapping around the slim column, choking off the shrill sound. The pressure increased. The sharp pain in her breast faded abruptly, swamped by the more pressing need to breathe. Frantically, she struggled to free herself from the punishing grip. As she bucked and writhed, her lungs began to burn, her vision dimmed. Her tongue seemed to swell in her mouth, further choking her.
Just when she thought her throat would be crushed, the pressure eased. Coughing and gasping, she sucked in great gulps of the scented air. And now she recognized that other smell in the room. It came to her in one horrifying flash.
Blood.
The devil’s lips brushed her ear.
“It’s not going to be that easy, my sweet,” he murmured silkily, sliding over her. Skin against skin. His sweat mingling with her blood. “I am not through with you yet.”
He reached for something above her, and though her heart pounded in her ears, Lydia heard the unmistakable clink of metal. Then, the cold bite of steel against her flesh.
Her eyes widened and the bone-shaking terror that flooded her made her yearn for the unconsciousness denied her a moment ago. Because now she knew that this was no sensual lair with the flickering candles and beautiful bed.
A choked sob escaped her.
This wasn’t heaven, after all.
1
Present Day
“You’re sure about this? Absolutely sure? We finally got the son of a bitch?”
Unease, as dark and slick as an oil spill, slid inside Kendra’s belly. She ignored the sensation, putting it down to the dozen pairs of eyes locked on her at the moment.
And not just any eyes. Three sets of those eyes belonged to assistant directors or associate deputy directors from a veritable alphabet soup of agencies—the CIA, NSA, and her own FBI, including a senior official from the National Security Branch, which had been formed post-9/11 to coordinate counter-terrorism, counterintelligence, and intelligence resources. The other members of the special task force were agents like her, although she was the only woman in the room. Depending on one’s perspective, that made her either very special or a freak. She shied away from choosing a side on that one.
“It’s Balakirev.” Kendra kept her voice cool and steady with an effort, though she felt those eyes pressing against her like a physical weight. “We managed to get a lock on his IP address after we covertly piggybacked onto one of his client’s wired accounts—”
“It wasn’t easy,” Special Agent Daniel Sheppard jumped in, excitement animating his usually taciturn features. “The sneaky bastard bounced the signal around the globe.”
Daniel was, at heart, a computer geek, and used his skills brilliantly within the FBI’s Cyber Action Teams. Normally, he was responsible for chasing malicious computer hackers throughout the world. This was the first time he’d been asked to track down a known terrorist.
“But Kendra—Special Agent Donovan—created a program that was absolutely genius,” Daniel continued, shooting the woman beside him a look of admiration. “It tracked his previous patterns, allowing us to leap forward, rather than catching up with his signal—”
“I understand.” Peter Carson, the FBI’s assistant director of the New York field office, raised his hand in an impatient, preemptive gesture to ward off what would undoubtedly be a long-winded session of techno-speak. Carson wasn’t a computer geek. He had no interest in the Internet, except to use it to nail the ass of one Vlad Balakirev, former KGB agent turned merchant of death.
The Russian had been Carson’s mission for more than a year, ever since the NSA had picked up chatter linking him to an al-Qaeda terrorist group rumored to be on the verge of setting up a cell in New York City. They’d formed an elite, multi-agency task force to track Balakirev around the world. And they’d come damn close to capturing him twice: once in Jordan and then, two months later, in Spain. But he’d eluded them. In the process, he’d taken out five of their Special Ops agents.
That had been a bitter pill to swallow, but nothing compared to the gut-clenching fear that Carson felt after receiving intel a month ago that Balakirev had slipped into the United States with a cache of chemical weapons to sell. Specifically, ricin, the deadly compound favored by Balakirev’s former KGB. Carson had been chewing Tums like they were candy after that news.