The drunk dropped Nicholas, screamed in pain, and staggered backward.
“What the fuck?” demanded the other man, looking over his shoulder to see what had just happened.
Nicholas drew the razor from behind his belt and got to his feet just as the man at the urinal spun to face him. He didn’t wait for the man to engage. As soon as he was in range, Nicholas swiped at him with the blade.
He caught the man just above the knee, slashing through his trousers. He failed to cut him, though, and the man became enraged.
“You sneaky little bastard! Now you’re going to get it.”
“Kill that little fucker!” the other drunk yelled from behind his hands, as blood gushed from his nose.
Nicholas kept his razor ready, and when the man he had tried to cut lunged, he slashed at him again. But the lunge was only a feint. As the razor sliced through the air, the man pivoted and kicked it out of his hand. He then followed up with a punch to the side of Nicholas’s head, which sent him sailing across the tile floor.
His vision dimmed and his ear began to ring as blood rushed to the site of the blow. Since he was unarmed, there was no mystery as to what was going to happen to him next. The only question was how bad it was going to be.
He saw the man with the broken nose, blood covering the front of his shirt, stand and come over to join his colleague.
“Now you’re going to pay, you little fucker,” he hissed.
As the words came out of his mouth, there was a gentle whoosh of air as the bathroom door was opened and someone entered.
From his perspective, all Nicholas could see were a pair of leather pant legs. He heard a distinct
The woman dropped the drunk with the broken nose first via a blow to the back of his right knee. When his friend spun to see who was behind them, she swung the baton and broke his right arm. As he howled in agony, she hit him in his left leg, sending him to the floor alongside his buddy.
Without a word, the woman tore out both their wallets, studied their IDs, and then pocketed their business cards. Tossing their wallets back to them she said, “You’ve got five minutes to get the hell out of this hotel. If I ever see either of you again, I’m going to tell the world you tried to rape me, only to get your asses kicked by a man less than half your size. Now get the fuck out of here.”
The woman emphasized her point by putting the boot to each of them until they began crawling toward the door.
After they had regained their feet and limped away, she turned to Nicholas. “Punching a bit above your weight class there, weren’t you?”
His head hurt like hell, but he smiled.
“Let me help you up.”
“Thank you,” he said as she led him over to the sink, wet a paper towel with cold water, and handed it to him. “My name’s Nicholas.”
“I’m Caroline,” the woman replied. “Caroline Romero.”
That had been more than twenty years ago, and since then, Caroline Romero had never asked anything more of Nicholas than friendship—at least not until now.
There were multiple ways she could have contacted him, yet the method she chose had been very unorthodox, as was her warning.
As the ranch vehicle approached and the crew started unloading his belongings from the plane, Nicholas was concerned about why Caroline would have ever drawn him out of seclusion and into the open.
CHAPTER 5
FAIRFAX COUNTY
NORTHERN VIRGINIA
TUESDAY
Awakening to his room filling with smoke, Reed Carlton leapt from his bed and ran for the door. When he couldn’t get it open, he raced for the nearest window, only to find that the security shutters had been locked down.
He snatched up his iPad, and scanned the electronic blueprints of his house. Each man on his protective detail wore a special bracelet that pinpointed his location on the property. The men who watched over his house and him while he slept were the most professional and loyal operatives he had ever worked with. None of them was moving, which could mean only one thing. They were dead and he was under attack.
Whoever had set the fire had likely used accelerant in order to get it burning so hot and so fast. No matter how soon the firemen got there, they weren’t going to be able to save his house.
He noticed as he rushed into the bathroom that the overhead sprinklers weren’t working and neither were the smoke alarms. He turned on all the taps, but there was no water pressure. Someone had locked him in and was trying to burn him and his house to the ground.
How they had managed to pull it off was immaterial. Right now all that mattered was getting out.
Though the entire bedroom was a hardened safe room, Carlton had always known that even the best security measures could be circumvented, or worse, turned against their owners, which was why he had brought in a team from another state to construct a clandestine escape route from his bedroom and the house. It was a feature no one else knew about, not even his security detail. The sixty-five-year-old was old-school in that respect, but his habit of trying to anticipate the worst had kept him alive through decades in one of the world’s most dangerous professions.
For thirty years, he had been one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s most vaunted spies and had learned to compartmentalize everything. He took this characteristic with him when he left and implemented it across his own private intelligence organization, the Carlton Group. There were certain elements of tradecraft that never expired. And, like the flooding of a canal lock, many of them now came rushing back to mind.
Fire could create severe panic, and the first thing he had to focus on was staying calm. It wasn’t easy. It was so hot that the hair on his arms was beginning to singe. All around the room was the roar of the fire like the breaking of an enormous wave. The thickening smoke was acrid and the fact that it had permeated the seals of his safe room meant that he didn’t have much time left. Unable to save his people, he did the only thing he could do, he saved himself.
The passageway from his bedroom led to a tunnel beneath the house. When he had emerged into the cold night air some distance away, he turned to look back at the fire. He didn’t want to think about all the things he had lost inside, all the things that could never be replaced. He couldn’t afford to be preoccupied with what was gone. If he did, it would only make him angry. He needed to remain calm, detached.
His was a world of three-dimensional chess. In order to succeed at it, one needed to remain clearheaded and be able to think steps ahead of the opponent. The last thing Carlton needed was to go off half-cocked. That would be a mistake, and he couldn’t afford any right now.
By surviving the attack, he held the upper hand, at least for now. A fire this bad was going to take time to get under control and even more time for the authorities to get inside and begin investigating. They were going to have their work cut out for them identifying the bodies. That meant that right now, he had time on his side—what he did with it would make all the difference.
The protocol for a situation like this was very clear. First, he needed to get someplace safe. Only then could he start trying to piece together what had happened and begin to plan his next move.
CHAPTER 6
