The Blood Code (21 page)

Except that it could be. Especially when trying to escape a madman and his army of soldiers. Bleeding profusely left her light-headed and wasn’t exactly easy to take care of on the run. She opened her mouth to say, “I’m sorry,” for the hundredth time when Ryan leaned forward and placed his forehead against hers. Such an intimate gesture, it totally caught her off guard.

“I’m sorry.”

He
was sorry? “For what?”

“For getting you into this goatfuck. I should have left you in the Palace. Taken you to Pennington and come looking for your grandmother on my own.”

“No. I…Wait. You’re not icked out about my blood disorder?”

“Of course not. I figured you were a carrier of hemophilia. Most of the royal women were. I just didn’t realize you had a full-blown condition.”

Relief flooded her. Blood icked out everybody. Even her, and she dealt with genes, mutations, platelets, and all that stuff on a daily basis at GenLife. She’d never told anyone about the coagulation abnormality. Grams and her parents had been the only ones who knew.

Ryan’s nose brushed Anya’s. “You would’ve been warm in the Kremlin, had food. Bandages.” He lifted his head and punched the wall behind her. “I should have thought this through. Should have made a fucking-ass plan. But no, I just grabbed you and ran. Very thoughtful. Very…stupid. God!”

He stood and paced, unbuttoning his shirt, and shrugging it off. Next, he whipped off his T-shirt, and stood there half naked in front of her. She would have enjoyed it if he hadn’t been castigating himself.

Imperturbable Ryan was gone. “I should have made sure you were safe. There’s no excuse for this. You need a doctor, for fuck’s sake. Not an incompetent operative who can’t even make a viable escape plan.”

He ripped a wide strip off the bottom edge of the T-shirt, folded it into a bandage, and dropped to his knees in front of her. “I’ve put you in incredible danger.”

His fingers caressed her skin as he gently lifted the sweater and placed the bandage over her wound. So gentle. So opposite of his ranting and raving.

If this was incompetence, she’d take it over expert medical care any day.

Anya touched his face. “You think I would have stayed in the Palace and let you do this alone? It was stupid of me to attack Andreev, but there was no way I was letting him imprison me. Ivanov either. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, I’d be down here on my own, not knowing where to go, or how to find Grams, because I’m the one who can’t come up with a plan. I’m safer here with you than anywhere else.”

He ripped a second strip off his shirt, the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunching with the action. Winding the strip around her waist and tying it to hold the bandage in place, he avoided her eyes. “I did this all wrong.”

Anya grabbed his hands to still them. His face was so close, she felt his breath on her cheek. She kissed the corner of his lips. “A horse has four legs, but still stumbles. Grams always says that. It means—”

“Even the most capable people make mistakes sometimes.”

His expertise extended to old Russian lady proverbs. “Exactly. In my opinion, you did everything right, except for getting involved with me in the first place.”

Some of the tension left his body. “Nah, pretty sure that’s the part I did do right.”

He kissed her then, another full-out, make-her-want-to-moan kiss. She slid into his arms, no longer feeling weak or embarrassed.

She wanted him. More than she’d ever wanted anyone. She’d lived behind a mask all these years. Hid behind it. Never able to let her guard down and love anyone. The few times she’d shown real interest in a boy growing up, her grandmother had firmly squashed her hopes of a relationship. Grams made her focus on her schooling, taking piano, spending weekends on art exhibits and ballets, never letting Anya hang out with friends, and especially not boys.

Without coming right out and saying it, Grams had always had a way of making Anya feel like their family secrets were too dark, too dangerous to ever allow her the freedom her American peers had. Having a relationship meant sharing pasts, sharing personal information. Even casual dating was out because it might lead to something more intrusive. So Anya had made up fantasies from the time she was fourteen about the opposite sex. What it felt like to be kissed, to be held.

She crawled into his lap. Ryan’s arms around her was nothing short of her wildest fantasy, and at twenty-six, she had some pretty righteous fantasies. He was hard and soft and warm, even with no shirt on, and he drew her closer, molding her body against his. One hand slipped up to cup her breast and she moaned into his mouth. The kiss was long and deep and so erotic, her toes curled. She wrapped her arms around his neck and ignored the voice inside her head, reciting Grams’s rules.

To hell with rules. What had following them gotten her and her family anyway? Heartache, death.

She broke the kiss, looked Ryan in the eye. “I’ve been fantasizing about you since the cabin.”

His eyes widened and he grinned. “I’ve been doing a bit of that about you.”

Yes
. She ran her hands over his shoulders, down his sculpted arms. He had to be a runner or a swimmer. Maybe both.

Muscles jumped under her fingers. “This”—she touched him on his chest just over his heart and then pointed at herself—“you and me, right here, right now, is better than any of my fantasies.”

The grin on his face grew. “My top fantasy involves you with fewer clothes on.”

She laughed, and he laughed with her. It was a soft, inviting sound in the otherwise cold, harsh tunnel. She traced a finger over his lips, and he kissed it. Between her legs, an explosion of sensations went off. There was still one last secret to share. “I feel a lot stronger now. Maybe we could act out a few of our fantasies.”

He kissed her lips, three short, soft kisses in a row before he shook his head. “Not here in the open, under such dangerous circumstances. We need a place for you to rest up, and me to come up with a more solid escape plan.”

He slid her off his lap, and rezipped the coat. Then he helped her stand. Snatching up his button-down shirt, he shook his head a moment before he threw it on, which was a shame. He stuck what was left of the T-shirt into her coat pocket. “How’s your side? Do you think you can walk a little further? Stalin’s suite should be just ahead.”

The presidential suite. Anya shivered. Not Ivanov’s, she reminded herself. His was a brand-new, shiny version in another part of the bunker. She’d already seen that one firsthand, along with the lab he’d built.

Ryan seemed to read her mind. “The suite hasn’t been used in years. Not actively, anyway. But it may have what we need. Food, clothes, first-aid supplies.”

Knowing he was right didn’t make her any happier that he was now his old self again. Calm, cool, unflappable Ryan.

But that was okay. She’d make him lose control again, and soon. “The new bunker is down here somewhere, too. I’ve seen it. It definitely has supplies.” Calling up polite, steadfast Anya, she pressed a hand against her side and gave him a nod. “Lead the way.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Subway Tunnel

Moscow

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” John adjusted the face mask he wore to blend in with the other construction workers cleaning up debris leftover from the latest bomb blast.

Devons chuckled, his own mask muffling the sound. “Becoming a terrorist or a disaster recovery specialist?”

John moved some rubble out of the way. “Since when are you friends with Chechen rebels?”

“I might have dated one of their sisters back in the day.”

Why didn’t that surprise him? Mossad agents, Chechen rebels. What next?

Devons held out a meter meant to read air quality. A low blipping noise sounded. “Guy owed me a favor and was more than happy to unload on the Ruskies. No one was killed. Injuries were light. Fast was what Flynn wanted, and fast is what we’re giving him.”

Stealth and efficiency were John’s and Pegasus Team’s motto. “Bombings? Protests? Total overkill for a search and rescue.”

“Overkill? We’re talking about a launch code for nuclear warheads aimed at Britain and America, and a total psycho with his finger on the button.” Devons pocketed the meter. “And from the intel Del got from Truman Gunn, our operative is about to do something that could put the Cold War and nuclear annihilation back on today’s menu. The MTD says he’s down here, under the Kremlin.”

John had never met Ryan Smith, only heard stories about him. He tended to stay behind the scenes, unlike Conrad Flynn, even though they had similar positions. Word was, Smith was every bit as cunning and devious as Flynn, only more likable since he befriended people rather than pissing them off. “Tracking device or no, my mission isn’t about Smith. He’s your job. Mine is to recover Natasha.”

A heavy fog hung in the air, thus the need for air masks. Because the Russian government feared chemical or biological fallout from the bombs, the workers were dressed in full Nomex suits. Hot, sweaty suits.

Devons and John had sidled away from the main group, heading discreetly toward a maintenance door that ran behind the subway tunnels and connected to the hidden bunker. Or so Del had told them.

“This distraction gives us both the opportunity to complete our respective missions.” Devons checked over his shoulder to see if they were being watched. Satisfied the rest of the cleanup crew was paying no attention to them, he motioned John toward the steel door. “You find Natasha, and I’ll get Smitty and Anya out if necessary.”

“Why would he blow his cover for this Russian gal?” John said before he thought it through. If it were Lucie—a woman he’d been crushing on for months—inside the Kremlin, he’d do the same thing. “Never mind. Let’s just get that door open.”

The steel door was locked, but when did that ever stop an Agency operative? As John stood lookout, Devons used a handheld lock pick to open it. The door was heavy and rusty from moisture, squeaking loudly as they shoved it open.

The squeak echoed in the crumbling tunnel. The heavy fog, still full of debris, helped hide them from any curious eyes. John heard a shout from behind them, so he pushed Devons through, jerked the door shut, and flipped the lock.

Next to the door sat a heavy cart filled with tools, a hard hat, and other paraphernalia the subway’s maintenance workers used. Once he shed his mask, John took a breath of clean air, and picked up a couple of hand tools. Devons, clearly liking the idea, did the same.

John had been on plenty of dangerous missions, but entering the heart of a Russian Cold War bunker topped the list. As always, he had an entrance and exit strategy. It was what lay in between that made his palms sweat.

He drew out a map—courtesy of Del—from his coveralls, got his bearings, and motioned Devons to follow. “Half a kilometer west we should find Stalin’s bunker. The torture chambers Grigory told us about are there.”

“What if she’s dead?”

Then the search and rescue mission became a search and recovery. “We bring her body back.”

“And if she’s not there?”

Ah, the fatal question that hung over every mission. The possibility of failure. “Then I’ll keep looking until I find her.”

They ran at a good clip, the slapping of their feet echoing in the tunnel as they covered the ground. Light from fixtures mounted on the walls gave the tunnel enough illumination for John to see Devons’s face. The spy persona was gone. Not even the fake cop persona seemed alive.

At an intersection, Devons stopped to catch his breath and looked around. “You eat, breathe, and sleep this special ops shit, don’t you?” he panted. “I ever go missing? I want you heading up my rescue. Got that?”

Sincerity. That’s what Devon’s face revealed. John nodded. “And if I ever need a ‘distraction’ of this magnitude again, I’ll call you.”

Devons held out a hand. John shook it.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Anya was asleep in Stalin’s presidential bedchamber. There were no guards in this section, which worried Ryan more than he would admit. What he’d told Anya was true. GI 42 hadn’t been actively used to the best of anyone’s knowledge since Stalin. Didn’t mean it wasn’t kept functioning and ready for action in the event of war, even if Ivanov had created a new, improved version nearby.

The shock-wave proof doors had been locked, of course, but they’d also been updated to a computerized system from the time Stalin had originally had them installed. Probably by one of his successors. While able to withstand a twenty-ton nuclear blast, the locks fell to an average guy who knew his way around a digital lock.

Inside the abandoned presidential bunker were three central rooms: the president’s suite, a communications/weapons room, and a kitchen/utility area. Ryan had found a first-aid kit and doctored Anya’s wound. He’d also found some MREs stored in the kitchen—ones created in the current decade, too, with fancy names. The fancy names did nothing to change the fact that the ready-to-eat meals were mostly canned beef. He also found tea and sugar. The beef tasted like hell, but Anya didn’t complain. She ate what he fed her and drank the tea, which was a yellow color, but had no flavor outside of the sugar he’d added to the cup.

Anya was so damn tough. Hard to believe. She looked fragile on the outside, all pale skin, white hair, and lanky limbs. A few vulnerable spots here and there, and yet, she didn’t let those stop her from giving one hundred and ten percent. “Strong-willed,” that’s what his mother had always called him. That’s what he saw in Anya.

“Ryan?”

His body gave its normal happy response to the sound of her voice. Nerves tingled, his pulse sped up, and his crotch tightened.

Smiling, he paused typing on the keyboard in front of him, and turned from the control panel to face her. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”

She’d wrapped a blanket around her body, hair sticking out on one side of her face. Free of makeup, her white-blond eyelashes made her eyes look even more like blue crystals. He wished she’d leave off the mascara permanently. He liked her better this way.

Crossing the floor, she eyed the computer and the gun sitting next to his hand. Then she leaned forward and kissed him hello. Possessive and sweet, and
ah, man
, his crotch wasn’t just tight, it was painfully hard.

“That room, all that red.” She drew the blanket tighter. “It gives me the creeps. Reminds me of all the Russian blood Stalin spilled.”

For a geneticist, she sure had an aversion to blood. He motioned to a nearby chair even though he wanted to drag her down into his lap. “You look better.”

“I feel better.” She sat and harrumphed as she arranged the blanket to her liking. “I suck at this cloak-and-dagger stuff, in case you didn’t notice. All this stress, no sleep…again, I’m sorry for being more of a hindrance than a help with locating my grandmother.”

Forcing himself not to stare at her incredible lips, Ryan cleared his throat, and clicked a few meaningless keys on the keyboard while it continued to boot up. He’d plugged a small, portable mobile access hub into the mainframe, hoping to find some kind of Internet access. “Actually, you’ve been pretty impressive through all of this.”

He stole a glance at her, and saw her eyes light up. “You’re just saying that because you want to get my pants off.”

The minute she said it, she blushed. Her flirting skills were so damn awkward, it turned him on. Hell, everything about her turned him on. “That is a strong possibility.”

They both laughed. Anya nodded at the keyboard. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to make contact with the outside world. No one knows where we are and…” He fiddled with the keys.

“And if we die, no one will know what happened.”

She caught on quick. “This bunker’s communication system isn’t as sophisticated as I had hoped.” He pointed at the floppy disk drive, vintage 1990s. “But if I can figure out a few passwords, and this puppy has any kind of satellite—which it should since it was designed to send out messages to all the missile systems in case of an attack—I can get a message to Langley undetected.”

“The CIA will rescue us?”

No. They wouldn’t do an extraction from Russia for only Anya and Natasha. Conrad would, but Michael Stone, Deputy Director of the CIA, and maximum hard-ass supreme, would never okay it. Unless…

Unless his brother-in-law and commander in chief was in trouble.

Hmm. Ryan spun the idea around. What the hell. He’d already ruined his career. No point in doing it halfway. “If I send the right message, they’ll come.”

Anya scooted her chair across the floor, edging closer. “How can you figure out the password? It could be anything.”

“Well, usually, I tell a super geek at the Agency to hack it for me, but since that option is out, I have to be the super geek, and do it myself. A password isn’t that hard to crack, but it’s time-consuming since it can be any combination of numbers and letters. Personal passwords are easier because they mean something to the person who sets them up, so if you know a few details about the person, like their birthday and wedding anniversary, combined with their kid’s name,
bingo.

“In this case, we’re dealing with a government organization—not a person. The passwords for this system were generated by a computer. The trick is, an administrator had to develop the system and tell the computer to generate passwords. With this old system, all I have to do is locate the administrator’s password—which I can find with a simple DOS command—and…”

He typed in the last command, and
come to papa
, there it was. A fourteen digit combo of Russian numbers and letters in both upper and lowercase used by the system administrator. Which might have very well been Anya’s father. Ryan had memorized the facts about Peter Radzoya from Del’s file. The man had gotten himself, and his family, into a political scandal of massive proportions. “Now we use the admin’s password and uncover the rest.”

“Wow.” Anya high-fived him. “Industrious and resourceful.”

Not really, but he was glad she thought so. A more sophisticated system would have taken hours, maybe days or weeks to crack. “Back in the day, this computer system was high-tech, but the developers and administrator were only worried about an outside breach of security, not an internal one.”

Logging into the center’s infrastructure, he decided to see if he could breach another semi-secure, although human, site. “So tell me about your job.”

Anya sat back in the chair, tucking her feet under her. “I work at GenLife Laboratories in D.C. on special gene mapping for certain individuals. I do research on the Human Genome Project in my spare time.”

“Gene mapping, huh?” He already knew all about her job–she’d followed in her mother’s footsteps. “Heavy stuff.”

Pride rang in her voice. “Some of it, yes. I help people, like a doctor, but in a different manner.”

“Help them how?”

“I perform DNA analyses for a select clientele. For instance, my last case involved a high-profile female client whose sister was dying from a rapid onset of breast cancer. I did the workup and found my client’s gene pool showed she had not inherited any mutation of the genes that suppress tumors in the breasts and ovaries. Her odds of contracting the breast cancer her sister had were almost nonexistent. I gave her that news right before this whole thing with Grams went down. It was a good day.”

Her last good day in a week. Ryan saw it in her expression. Somehow, he was going to make sure she had lots of good days in the future.

Words filtering across the screen in front of him showed the computer was still trying to connect with the satellite. At this rate, he could escape Russia and walk to Langley before his message got there. “That’s cool. What about the client whose gene map shows they
did
inherit something ugly? How do you handle that?”

“Sharing that news is never easy, but what I do gives them knowledge. Gives them the opportunity to be proactive and do something to offset whatever it is. I can give them hope along with the facts about their genetic makeup.”

Ryan had met a few scientists over the years. He’d even smuggled one of out of North Korea in his younger days as a field operative. Granted, those scientists were of the nuclear weapons and biological warfare variety, but none of them had been a compassionate scientist like Anya. Where they’d viewed people as expendable, she viewed people as humans, and wanted to help them overcome their frailties and susceptibilities instead of capitalizing on them.

The computer beeped and hummed, another step closer to satellite hookup. Thinking about scientists and Cold War Russia triggered another thought in Ryan’s already cluttered brain. “Did Ivanov mention anything directly about you resuming your work here?”

“It was more implied. Why?”

“We know he’s obsessed with royal bloodlines and racial ideology. Having you, a geneticist, who can map people’s genes and advise him on whose gene pool is clean…” He shrugged.

She straightened her long legs, practically coming out of the chair. Her socked feet brushed against his leg. “Oh my God. That’s it. I knew he wanted to cleanse the race, but I thought it was for future generations.” The blanket fell from her shoulders and she nodded as if remembering something. “But it’s more than that. Every time I was with him, he talked endlessly about restoring Russia to the way it used to be, bringing back pride in the country and respect for the leaders. But he only wants advisors and officials around him who are pure Russians, with nothing in their backgrounds that might mar his presidency. When he was talking about it, I thought he meant scandals and other political nightmares, but he was talking about their blood, wasn’t he? That bastard! That’s why he gave me those medical files. He wanted me to analyze their gene pools, make sure they didn’t have any defects.”

“A Hitler wannabe.”

“Exactly.”

Seeing her so animated was much better than seeing her faint. Better, even, than watching her sleep, which he’d done for the second time since the cabin, when he’d tucked her into Stalin’s bed with its red sheets. He couldn’t help it. He loved seeing her relaxed, the worry lines around her eyes erased.

Of course seeing her lying in bed, her white-blond hair a tangled mess against the red silk had given him a hard-on for the record books. He’d had to leave her sleeping and take a trip through the weapons room to restore the blood flow to his brain.

Now her cheeks were pink, hair mussed, and eyes bright with renewed determination to stop Ivanov’s plans to use her. The blanket around her waist showed off the fact she was still wearing Ryan’s sweater, the heavy cable knit cotton molding perfectly to her breasts.

God, he wanted her. Against all his logic and better judgment. Against the fact she’d been through hell in the past week. Against the fact they were sitting in a run-down operations room eighteen kilometers under Moscow without hope one of making it out alive.

Anya slid her chair closer, her feet intertwining with his. She touched his hand, then stroked the butt of the GSh-18 semiautomatic on the counter. Her slender, pale fingers contrasted against the hard, black handgun, and Ryan was suddenly jealous of an inanimate object. “Should I be armed, too?”

“Have you, uh…” She was looking at him so intently with those eyes that did him in, and now one of her feet was rubbing up and down on his leg. His brain was mush. “Have you had firearms training?”

She bit her bottom lip, as if he might be disappointed because she didn’t know how to shoot a gun. “Can you teach me?”

That imploring look combined with the lip-biting and
shit
. Two seconds, tops, he was going to explode. “We could, um…” He knew what he should say, but for the life of him, he could not form words.

Gun, dipshit. She wants to learn how to shoot your gun.

And if that thought didn’t send him into sexual tension orbit, what would?

“I can show you the, uh, basics, if you want. Firing, field stripping.” Damn, when had talking guns become such a turn-on? “But one thing you need to remember. Never point a gun at someone unless you’re prepared to kill.”

Her lips thinned.

Double shit.
Way to romance the woman you want to have sex with by talking about killing people.

But it was true. He only used weapons as a last possible defense. Taking someone’s life, even a psychotic maniac like Ivanov, wasn’t child’s play. It was something you lived with the rest of your life. Anya had enough scars. She didn’t need to add another to her list.

She removed her hand from the gun, but her face was set with resolve. “I won’t ask you to do anything I’m not willing to do myself.”

Goddamn, she was a unique woman. “I’m trained in self-defense.”

“So am I.”

Surprise, surprise. “What type?”

“Tae kwon do. Grams made me take lessons from the time I was fourteen.”

“I like your Grams. She’s one smart cookie.”

Anya smiled and held out her hand. “You wield the gun, I’ll wield hand attacks and kicks.”

Ryan slid his hand into hers and they shook. “When we get you and your grandmother safely back to the States, I’d like to see you. You know, um…date you.”

Her smile widened, and then she was pushing his chair backward and climbing into his lap. The blanket fell to the ground, her legs sidled half on top of his as she kissed him. A sexier, wetter version of the hello kiss she’d dropped on him earlier.

That was Anya. Simple flirting seemed difficult for her, but she was full throttle when it came to kissing him.

A nice problem to have.

Her lips turned demanding, and Ryan forgot everything. The computer humming in the background. The stark communication center walls, low ceiling, and freezing air. He closed his eyes and kissed her back, letting his hands slide up her thighs, under his sweater.

And then that black hole opened up, not the one that had to do with her legs, but that black hole he hadn’t seen since he and Conrad had gone AWOL from the CIA just over a year ago. The one where everything was spinning out of control and he was terrified.