Her Rocky Mountain Hero. Jen Bokal

Mateev. Belkin watched as the kid was maneuvered through the doorway and then followed, locking up behind them.

      He was very happy to be back in comfortable surroundings. If he had to bide his time during a job, this wasn’t a bad place to do it. The house belonged to an American footballer from San Francisco, a tax shelter no doubt, and one of the nicest homes available in Telluride. Situated halfway up the mountain, a mudroom, complete with heated floors and cubbyholes for skis and snowboards, served as the entryway. A set of stairs descended to a well-appointed basement that featured a sauna and a home theater with leather recliners for two dozen along with a popcorn machine. Floor-to-ceiling picture windows in the great room looked out to the nearby woods, with a private trail heading to the white stretch of ski slopes visible between the spindly tree branches. Beyond a fireplace large enough for a grown man to stand in was the kitchen, which held a five-hundred-bottle wine cooler and multiple pantries along with what seemed like acres of granite countertops and shiny appliances.

      Even the most opulent homes in Russia were not as luxurious as this playhouse for wealthy Americans. Standing at the window, Peter Belkin stared at the snow accumulating on the adjoining deck. It had already piled up around the base of the hot tub. He had been right to postpone their escape and let Mother Nature have her fun.

      Ah, knowing that he would be back in Russia for Christmas also warmed him. Upon his arrival in Moscow he would go to Ugolëk and order borscht, hot black tea and good vodka. While Russia was always Belkin’s home, he knew that he could return to the United States and a residence such as this whenever he chose—for he had also become a wealthy American.

      “Belkin?”

      Instead of turning to the man who now stood behind him, he used the glass as a mirror reflecting off the black night and made eye contact that way. “Da.”

      “The kid’s in bed and sleeping off the sedative. What do you want me to do?”

      “Leave now,” he said. His team didn’t know all the details of the Gregory Mateev abduction, nor did they need to. “We’ll meet at the airstrip—four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Get in touch with the other two in the morning and let them know.”

      “Anything you say.”

      “One last thing.” He pinned the man with his reflected stare. “Leave the syringes.” Belkin didn’t want to deal with Gregory should he still be belligerent when he woke up.

      Belkin waited while the other man moved through the house, quietly gathering his gear. The front door opened, sending a blast of frigid air swirling through the room, then the door closed with a soft thump.

      Letting out a long breath, Belkin returned to the kitchen. He drew a chair from the large kitchen table and slid it inside one of the pantries. Perched atop the chair, Belkin stretched, reaching for the uppermost shelf. His fingertips connected with the slim, cold metallic edge of his personal laptop. He pulled it out then gingerly stepped down from the chair. Having dragged the chair back, he set the laptop carefully on the table.

      Before sitting down, Belkin walked to the front door. A quick glance through the peephole showed that Alpha had taken the spare car, leaving Belkin with the SUV. He clicked the lock into place and returned to the table. True, he relied upon his security team. True, there were reasons to keep them all together. True, Belkin might still need them, even though the operation was nearly complete. Still, he didn’t trust them, or anyone else, completely.

      The fee for retrieving the Mateev brat had been a healthy quarter of a billion US dollars. His men were being well compensated, but they didn’t know the exact take. Over the years, Belkin had learned that people were greedy. And greedy people couldn’t be trusted.

      Certain he was right to remain alone, Belkin powered up the computer and opened the FaceTime app. A small screen with his visage in real time appeared. Seeing his face on the computer screen always surprised and faintly depressed him. He seemed tired, old. Fine lines surrounded his eyes and the hair at his temples had turned unmistakably gray. He smoothed down an unruly eyebrow before entering a number into the contact bar. With a few more clicks of the mouse Belkin’s screen dropped down to the corner and Nikolai Mateev’s face popped up.

      Nikolai was a large man with sparse white hair. He had small, dark eyes and a bulbous nose, made all the more noticeable by the broken capillaries that surrounded its base like angry red worms. A testament to a lifetime of drinking vodka, no doubt.

      “You have good news for me, yes?” Nikolai asked.

      “Very good news. You will have your grandson with you by Rozhdestvo. The real Christmas,” he added quickly, meaning Russian Orthodox Christmas. “We had hoped to be in Moscow by the evening of December twenty-fourth, but a storm has delayed our plans to leave.”

      “And the mother?” Nikolai turned, so that his eye was level with the camera.

      “She will bother you no more.”

      The nose filled the small inset screen again. Nikolai sniffed and a gigantic nostril appeared. “You have done well.” He paused and added, “This time. I will transfer payment now.”

      “Thank you, Otets.” Nikolai was no sire of Belkin’s, but he did hold ultimate power over Belkin and his fate, and a little flattery by referring to the criminal overlord of Moscow as father always went a long way.

      A meaty hand flashed across the screen, waving away Belkin’s sobriquet. “There is something else I want you to handle. Once you return from Russia, that is.”

      “Of course,” said Belkin. His pulse did a triple step.

      “There is a retired MI5 agent, Sir Ian Wallace, who now lives in Denver.” Nikolai leaned back, his face lost in the gloom of the ill-lit room behind him. “I need to know all about Sir Ian and then I need him to disappear.”

      “Of course, Otets.”

      Nikolai’s nose grew large again and then his screen went blank.

      Belkin sat back and massaged his neck. It had been a long assignment that just got longer. It didn’t matter. To curry favor with someone as important as Nikolai Mateev, Belkin would do anything.

      He opened his computer’s internet browser and spent a few minutes accessing the deep web. Give Belkin a name and there was nothing he couldn’t learn about a person: from shopping habits, to favorite cable news network, to secrets, to the loved ones they would do anything to protect and the secrets of those people, as well.

      It took a quarter of an hour to circumvent MI5’s firewall. Once there, he had only moments to fill in a complete picture of Sir Ian’s life. He had been an agent with MI5, awarded his knighthood after thwarting a terrorist attack on London’s subway system. After that, Ian had been linked romantically with several famous women, and most recently with up-and-coming Denver sports agent, Petra Sloan. It explained how a Brit ended up in Colorado. He had opened a private security firm in Denver, Rocky Mountain Justice.

      RMJ was a small operation; unless you knew where and how to find them, they were invisible. Yet, Belkin had pulled back the veil and now had access to all pertinent corporate information. The firm quietly found missing people and sometimes worked with a variety of agencies, such as the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the federal big brother—the FBI—in matters such as public corruption.

      Belkin stared at the computer. Certainly a firm unrestrained by laws could be bothersome to a large-scale drug dealer, but something didn’t add up. Why did Nikolai want Sir Ian dead? His firm had less than two dozen employees. In fact, why did he care at all?

      On a whim, he entered Nikolai Mateev’s name into the RMJ search engine. An incomplete hit turned up one Mateev—Viktoria Mateev, no less. It appeared that RMJ had been hired to find her and it was their tip that had led Belkin right to her. He laughed to himself. Ironic, no?

      A few more keystrokes and he found the automatically generated email and stopped. It was another name he recognized and never thought to see again: Cody Samuels.

      While at the DEA, Agent Samuels came close to building