Maybe, maybe not. York couldn’t tell, but he did get his hands on the kid’s lanyard and ripped it with a hard yank from his neck. “I beg to differ.”
Martin glanced in the rearview. “Don’t touch him.”
York gripped the cross in his hand. Looked like something he might make at camp—a couple of nails soldered together. And the lanyard would free him.
Thank you, kid.
York wound the lanyard through his flexicuffs at the wrist, caught one edge of the cuffs, then clamped the ends of the lanyard between his teeth.
“Hey!” Igor shouted and York dodged a cuff to his head.
A couple sawing motions and York was through the cuffs.
“Stop him!” Martin shouted as he went around a curve. He nearly hit a car off to the side.
York exploded. He stabbed the long end of the cross into Igor’s neck as the thug came over the seat, hitting the carotid artery. Blood gushed as Igor grabbed his neck, gasping.
RJ, hang on. I’m coming back to you.
York snaked an arm around Martin, held him against the headrest, the bloody end of the cross next to his neck. “Stop the car.”
But Igor was thrashing, grabbing for the wheel, or maybe just help, and Martin had to shove him off. Which made him swerve hard. He banked off the guardrail, over the center line, toward a wall of mountain.
And into the oncoming lane.
Just then, around the corner, a semi appeared, big grille, wide load, and oh, that would make a splat. York leaped forward and grabbed the wheel, wrenching it over hard.
The force turned the SUV, screeching, spinning, around, slamming York against the door.
Right about then, something cold and hard sliced across his side. Maybe the cross, still gripped in his hand.
The SUV smashed against the semi, careening it toward the edge of the road.
York grabbed the door handle and jerked it open just as the car hit the guardrail.
The car went airborne, spinning up, over the edge.
York felt himself tearing out of the door, slipping into the air, his body flying.
Then the world twisted around him as he fell and fell into the tangled forest below.
1
Ruby Jane Marshall wasn’t a runner. Normally.
Usually, her SOP was to hunker down and hide. Like a rabbit, her little heart pounding in her chest, seconds away from a heart attack.
But as she stood in the kitchen of the rowhouse in DC, sirens haunting the autumn night air, a voice screamed in her head that sounded a lot like York’s.
Run!
The blaring unsettled the Mayfair neighborhood, lights flickering on in nearby townhomes, and she had five minutes—maybe less—to track down a serial killer.
A killer whose victims included her boss, Sophia Randall.
And maybe the man she loved, York Newgate, although—nope, she wasn’t going there.
She simply refused to accept the idea that York could be dead. Not when his body hadn’t been conclusively identified.
So running wasn’t an option. Nor hiding. Not until RJ tracked down Sophia’s notebook and maybe her laptop computer. Anything that might give her a fresh lead on Sophia’s death, give her a clue as to why her boss would have been in Seattle.
And most of all, how she ended up in the sights of a Russian assassin.
RJ darted out from shadows behind the fridge where she’d momentarily planted herself when she heard the first mourn of a siren. Of course they’d be coming for her because she wasn’t a supersleuth or even an action heroine. More like a glorified secretary with the B&E skills of a third grader.
To get into Sophia’s place, RJ had broken a window on the ground floor. Climbed in over a plant, which now littered the sofa with its dry-as-dust remains, and tracked her footprints across the formerly white carpet of the guest room and up the stairs to the kitchen and living room area.
Oh, she was definitely going down for this. Jail. Prison. And orange so washed out her complexion, clashing with her dark hair and blue eyes.
But desperate times called for crazy actions and…
What would York do?
He was still in her head, those blue eyes looking at her like she could save the world—or maybe just his world.
She bumped into a table in the dark and reached out to right the wobbling lamp—
The crash raised gooseflesh and she froze again. She was going to leave a raccoon trail of evidence through Sophia’s apartment. But it wasn’t like Sophia was around to press charges.
Not since she’d died four weeks ago.
Don’t. Think. About—
RJ blew out a breath, trailing her hand down the hallway toward the first door on the right, Sophia’s office, working off the scant memory of a casual dinner party a year ago.
Please let Sophia have left behind her journal, the one she always carried, old-style, to jot her thoughts.
The journal had to be here. Vicktor Shubnikov, the police detective in Seattle who headed up the investigation, had been kind enough to give her a list of the evidence found at the crime scene.
No journal in Sophia’s possession. Just her body, a lot of blood, and evidence of a struggle.
At least her boss had gone down fighting.
Hopefully the journal led to clues about how she ended up in a hotel room in Seattle, her throat slit, clearly having been tortured.
Don’t. Think—
RJ drew in a breath and brailled the wall inside the office door. She found a light switch. Flicked it on.
Hello, neighbors. Maybe they would think Sophia had returned.
The sirens faded, and for a moment, she heard her breath, heavy in her chest. Maybe she hadn’t triggered an alarm…
Still, she needed to add some giddy-up to this snatch and grab.
The tiny office was palatial by DC standards, containing a standing desk, a credenza, and a bookcase. The entire townhouse, a three-story walk-up brownstone, had been renovated in the revived trendy, early-eighties’ style—muted gold fixtures, dark wood floors, shaggy white rugs, and cool white driftwood furniture. The office overlooked the lush garden alleyway that ran between the homes.
A deck led out from the office and ran the length of the unit.
She opened the credenza and began to sort through it. Bills, papers, folders, and a printer. Nothing that resembled Sophia’s small gray journal.
On the black desk, a dust ring framed the outline of a laptop computer, probably confiscated by a CIA sweep. Another fine wisp of dust over the top of the desk suggested they’d been here some time ago.
Opening the desk drawers, RJ riffled through pens, a checkbook, and leafed through the duplicate pages. She found an entry for a piano tuner, another for the Great Frame Up, a local picture framer. The office sported a few photos of friends and family, but Sophia was single, so no shots of her on a beach with a cute man.
On the wall, however, hung a picture of the astrological clock from Prague’s Old Town Square. The picture stirred memories of the last time RJ had been in Prague. She’d been meeting with a man named Roy who had sent her on a trip to Russia and ignited this whole fiasco.
The fiasco in which she’d found herself on the lam through the former Soviet Union, dodging the FSB and Interpol, suddenly named as the lead suspect in the attempted assassination of General Boris Stanislov.
Ex-CIA operative York Newgate had pulled her out of hiding, kept her alive, and secreted her out of the country. Of course, that only led to more trouble when the real assassin turned his sights on RJ and then her foster sister, Coco, and then, of course, York. Which only caused Ford, her Navy SEAL brother, to completely overreact and stage his own rescue attempt, one that nearly got him killed.