Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145091 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
If he was coming from Kraków, he’d driven a long way. It must have been important for him to get out of Poland. She flipped through the screens and then stopped, her breath catching.
Right outside the final curve, a BMW was smashed against a large tree. Smashed was hyperbole. It was more like slightly crushed, like the driver had been doing five miles an hour and taken his eyes off the road for a moment and lightly tapped the poor tree. “He’s had an accident.”
“Is he alive?”
“Unsure.” Though if he was dead, it wouldn’t be from that accident. She would bet the car was still running. She stood. She couldn’t tell anything from here. She would need to go to the site. “Is there a possibility he was followed?”
“Satellite tracking shows you’re alone. He wasn’t followed. Damn. Is that a car? Why isn’t he getting out? He should be fine,” the man breathed, losing his smooth tones. “Delta, the intel he has is important but so is he. He’s the son of a US senator who doesn’t know her baby boy is a spy. If he dies…”
She sighed and grabbed her boots. “Yeah, don’t let the rich kid die. Got it. I’ll report back when I’m done.” She hung up the line and shoved her feet into the boots. “Come to Romania, they said. It’ll be quiet, and you can get work done while you wait for your dad to come in.”
What the hell had that agent been doing trying to get up the mountain in a sedan?
She stomped out of the cabin. Had the guy fallen asleep? No one had mentioned prior injuries, and the Agency was pretty good about knowing what was going on with their field operatives. Especially the important ones. She’d learned that the CIA was like pretty much everywhere else. There were people who mattered and there were goats they led to slaughter without a second thought.
Why couldn’t her dad have been like a history professor? Or a trash guy. Yeah. Sanitation services professionals did important work, and for the most part none of them had to run for their lives on a daily basis. If they were lucky, they got tips at Christmas time. No one ever gave a spy a tip. Not the monetary kind. Honestly, as careers went, spying was low on the pay to danger ratio.
She worked her way across the big yard, her boots crunching in the snow. No one should be driving up the mountain in the middle of a late-spring blizzard, much less in a luxury sedan more suited for the Autobahn than this treacherous part of the Carpathians. She had a Land Rover and she wouldn’t drive in these conditions.
“Hello.” She called out to him because if she could get him out of the vehicle on his own, that would be optimal.
Nothing but the sound of the wind. Snow swirled around her, and she picked up the pace. Just because base hadn’t told her this dude was hurt didn’t mean he wasn’t. Some operatives liked to play down injuries. Once her dad had taken two bullets to his shoulder and told his handler he had a couple of scratches.
She jogged across the snow, her feet already threatening to go numb. The headlights from the car made twin beams in the predawn, lighting her way to the site. The snow reached her ankles, but she was able to jog. If he’d been here three weeks ago, she would have had to find snowshoes. Now she worried she wouldn’t be able to carry him back to the house if he was unconscious.
She made it to the car, and the driver was slumped over the steering wheel. Taylor reached for the driver’s side door and pulled the handle. Locked.
She had to wake him up or knock out one of the windows. If it was an Agency car, that would be hard to do. The windows would be reinforced against bullets, so her trying to kick it in wouldn’t do a lot. She slapped a hand against the window. “Hey. Hey, buddy, I’m going to need you to wake up.”
Please wake up. She didn’t want this guy to die on her. She could see the shallow movement of his back, signaling he was still breathing.
If she wanted him to stay that way, she needed to get him inside.
She knocked again, shaking the car. “Hey! Wake up!”
His head shifted slightly, coming off the wheel and slowly moving up as though every centimeter caused him pain.
The good news was she had pain meds. There was a fully stocked, more than first aid kit back in the cabin for just such an occasion, but she had to get him there. “Hey, I’m Taylor. I’m going to help you today. I’ve been in touch with base. We need to get you to the cabin.”