Ironclad Cover. Dana Marton

      “You’re welcome. For everything.” He sounded tired and distracted. He was probably on his laptop, checking e-mail messages.

      He seemed sharply efficient while staying studiously detached. But then there were those acts of unexpected kindness, the shirt in her left hand, the small bag of essentials in the other, room service.

      Brant Law wasn’t an easy man to figure out.

      HIS HIP THROBBED. It ticked him off. Brant walked into the George Town police department, using every ounce of will he had not to limp. He wasn’t going to pass his next physical. This assignment would be his last. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth.

      All the more reason for him to want to succeed with this case, a big one, something to remember him by other than that one miserable, glaring mistake he had made five years ago. He needed this case. And he’d had to hand it over to a bunch of criminals. It was enough to put him into a permanent bad mood even without the pain.

      “Brant Law, FBI.” He flipped his badge to the man at the front desk. “I’m here for a consult. Mind if I get a cup of coffee first?”

      The young cop looked at him, duly impressed by the badge. “Help yourself. It’s in the back.”

      “Thanks.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      He headed down the narrow hall, turned at the end. Damn if the evidence room didn’t conveniently have a sign on it. Locked. He looked around, produced his small tool kit, was inside the next minute. He riffled through the plastic bags in the in-box, found one with Reef Street Shooting scribbled on it along with the case number and date, then pocketed the bag with the lone bullet inside.

      On the way to Savall, he stopped by a FedEx store and overnighted the evidence to his office for analysis.

      “HOW DO YOU KNOW the bullet wasn’t for you?” Gina was drilling Brant. She stood next to Anita’s chair, Carly and Sam were engrossed in sorting printouts by the front desk. “What if you were the target?”

      He’d thought about that last night when he couldn’t sleep. The semi-sitting position the uncomfortable hotel armchairs allowed had been murder on his aching bones. And Anita’s soft breathing, which should have been soothing really, tickled something inside him that wouldn’t let him rest.

      “The bottle it hit was right in front of Anita.” The man had to be aiming straight for her chest. The muscles in Brant’s jaw tightened. He was about to say something else when the mailman came through the front door, cutting him off.

      The guy flashed an industrial spotlight of a smile around the room. “Hello, my lovelies.” He stopped in midmotion and glanced around at the tense silence. “Came at a bad time?”

      “Of course not.” Anita, gracious as always, met him halfway and took the mail.

      He gave Brant the once-over then threw Anita a questioning look. She shook her head with a barely repressed grin.

      “Goodbye, then.” He was pouting as he walked away.

      Brant rubbed his hand over his face. He didn’t even want to know what that was about.

      “What do we know about the assault weapon?” Gina asked once the door was closed behind the guy.

      “A nine millimeter handgun. I’ll know more when the paperwork on the bullet comes back.”

      “Tsernyakov?” Gina threw out the name.

      “That would be bad news all around.” They weren’t anywhere near Tsernyakov yet. If he had somehow been tipped off about the mission, the women would be sitting ducks. The safest thing to do would be to evacuate them as soon as possible. Which would end the mission.

      Damn, but he didn’t like that option. As little chance as he thought the women had of succeeding, he had no better ideas just now. They had put too many resources and too much effort into this to abort before seeing the operation to the end.

      And they had made some progress. They had formed something that was beginning to resemble a team. They had identified a handful of possible links to their main target. If they could figure out who the true connection was to Tsernyakov they could get close enough to him maybe to get a location on the man, which would be more than any unit trusted with his capture had ever been able to accomplish.

      Except, that now there was the extra complication of the shooter. Who was he? And what did he want?

      “Any enemies?” He looked at Anita.

      “Not that I’m aware of.”

      “How about your family? They know you’re out, right?” Gina’s and Anita’s families had been told the women had been released and entered into some kind of rehabilitation program where they weren’t allowed visitors for now. Carly and Sam had no close family who needed notification. “They must be ticked off over the money.”

      Anita looked uneasy as she glanced at the other women, then at him. “No,” she said that too fast, as if wanting to close the subject.

      What was the matter? Hadn’t she told the others that she’d stolen from the family business? Pellegrino’s was one of the largest construction companies in the state of Maryland, all of it family owned and operated. He watched her as she brought her expression under control. You wouldn’t know that she was a thief by looking at her. Beautiful on the outside, treacherous on the inside. Now why did that sound familiar?

      Probably because he’d gone down that road before.

      “I have an off-site consult today,” she said, probably looking for an excuse to leave.

      “Cancel it.”

      “Could be the shooter was connected to Cavanaugh,” Sam remarked from the reception desk. “Maybe someone connected to him picked up on Anita following him at that party or whatever.”

      Samantha Hanley, the youngest member of the team at twenty-one, wore nothing but black and had a fair number of facial piercings. Small scars around her eyebrows indicated that even now she was holding back for the sake of the professional image she was supposed to be projecting.

      “Like Michael Lambert,” Gina said.

      “No, I don’t think so.” Anita shook her head.

      Sam shrugged. “I mean, it’s an option, but not likely. I think in that case someone would have caught her and questioned her. You know, like what she wanted, who she worked for kind of stuff. Probably wouldn’t want to take her out without getting some explanation out of her first.”

      “Correct,” Brant said. But he was going to look into it anyway. And he was definitely going to look into Michael Lambert. He had already sent off a request to his office for a full background check on the man.

      “You stay put for now,” he said to Anita.

      “If we cancel work every time something happens, we will never catch Tsernyakov.” Gina was watching him. “It’s a dangerous mission. Stuff is going to keep happening. Right?”

      Gina Torno was a tough one. He supposed she had had to be. Being a cop was no cakewalk and being an ex-cop in prison was downright hazardous to a person’s health. But Gina had made it through—although, not without some scars.

      She was right about the mission. He just hadn’t expected something like assassination attempt to start happening this fast. First Carly and now Anita. Were the two connected? If not, it was a hell of a coincidence. And yet, as Gina had pointed out, they were working a risky case. Incidents were going to happen, dangerous incidents because they were entering increasingly dangerous situations. And that was exactly why they were here. He had known the score from day one. And so had they.

      “I’ll go with her,” Gina offered.

      He took a slow breath and considered that option. He would have preferred going with Anita himself, but if one of Tsernyakov’s men was watching