clicked through the Athena Academy Web site, searching out the girls’ pictures as the recording continued.
“I’m especially concerned about the lack of a ransom demand, deeply troubled. I’ll provide updates on this secure connection as soon as possible. We’re asking you to keep your antennae tuned for any clue as to the perpetrators and the whereabouts of the captives.
“As this kidnapping demonstrates, our days of keeping an extremely low profile may be waning. You wonderful young women are becoming a force to be reckoned with around the world. One final thought. The good guys and the bad guys are taking note of the increasing numbers of Athena alumni in positions of power and influence. Allison Gracelyn of the National Security Agency is here with us. Katie Rush, who is with the FBI and an expert on missing persons, has made extraordinary progress and is now in Colombia. Together with our ‘Athena Force,’ we’re going to get our girls back.”
The recording ended. Lindsey hung up. She studied the faces of the three girls in their class pictures and bookmarked the sites.
What a mess. Lindsey knew that Rainy’s eggs had been harvested in secret. They lied to her, told her that she’d had an appendectomy. She never found out, before she was killed, that she had three daughters. The scientist at Lab 33—what was his name? Aldrich something. But the “egg babies” controversy was over and done with. A year ago they shut the lab down. What in heaven’s name was going on?
Lindsey wanted to do follow-up research immediately, but a wave of fatigue leached away her concentration. And tomorrow she would jump into the sky. Of course, she wanted to look good on her way down—before she splattered.
Marko had already seen her hair sleeked back, which made her look almost brunette. She’d do the French braid but let wisps fall at the hairline. She was tired. Nevertheless, she exfoliated her face. Then her whole body. God, her nails were a mess. She did a quick sport manicure. And touched up her pedicure.
It was 11:30. She sighed. Time to crash.
Ooooh. Bad choice of words.
In her sleep that night, she dreamed of falling.
Chapter 4
Gesù Cristo e mamma-goddamn-mia, Marko thought as he drove to his place.
Lindsey…
He absolutely shouldn’t mess with the boss’s daughter. He loved women and plunged wholeheartedly into passionate relationships that burned out in disappointingly short times. If that happened with Lindsey, K-bar would never again give him the primo clients, let alone hire him to head up the new private extraction team. Hell, he’d probably fire him, and blacklist him from the personal security business. Actually, K-bar was capable of much worse.
The tires of the Maserati screeched as Marko took a corner too fast. He paid little attention. His mind was on other things.
Okay, say the passion didn’t burn out, he said to himself. K-bar would do almost anything to protect Lindsey from winding up with the wrong man. He probably had her lined up to meet rich sons of diplomats, or some of his wealthy clients.
Marko was pretty sure he wasn’t the right long-term guy for Lindsey. Yeah, they had the adrenaline rush thing going. But she was so well educated, classy. The final shock had been her painting. She was an artist, too. That painting…he kept picturing the way she’d captured the moon through branches….
At least he’d impressed her with the skydiving idea. How many sons of diplomats could offer that?
He pulled into the garage he rented and walked three blocks to his tiny second-floor apartment overlooking an alley. He’d put all his money into the car. Such pleasure it gave him to send his mama a picture of himself beside it and tell her he’d earned it. She alone in his family would be proud of him. The rest of the lot were exactly the kind of people Lindsey dealt with in buybacks—the thieves, not the clients.
Marko came from immigrant trash, though his great-great-grandfather had been part of the Russian aristocracy before WWI. Lindsey’s draw was more than skin-deep. She was everything he admired, maybe even what he wanted to be. Marko had been a poor soldier just out of the FFL when K-bar hired him six years ago. For the last three years, he’d been earning real money. He could speak the untutored Russian of his family, Italian, of course, French and English. He knew he could advance in a business like K-bar’s. He just had to get rid of his rough edges.
He called his friend Claudio who said there was a jump tomorrow and Marko and his girl were welcome. Marko hung up and stared down at the shabby tan carpet and then out into the night sky above the neighboring building. By what mysterious process had he looked at Lindsey and seen his own ambition and potential?
Lindsey looked a bit pale and didn’t say much on the forty-minute drive down al autostrada except to ask how many jumps he’d made.
“The next will be my 578th,” Marko said before reviewing safety issues and explaining about the drop zone. “You’re going to love it.”
They reached the little airport at Arezzo for an adventure in paracadutismo, parachuting, at 10:45 a.m. He and Claudio personally packed the chute for the tandem jump he and Lindsey would make.
Marko said, “A certified parachute rigger put in an altitude-sensitive device that opens automatically if for any reason we’re both unable to pull the cords.”
Lindsey looked even paler.
“But we will both be acutely conscious and loving it,” Marko said.
Lindsey laughed nervously. She pulled a bright yellow nylon suit over her tight but stretchy black ski clothes. Marko stepped into his orange suit. Several divers were boarding the small plane, whooping and laughing in their wild bicolor jumpsuits of turquoise and white, red and purple.
“They’ll jump ahead of us,” Marko said. He attached the tandem harness straps to Lindsey around the tops of each thigh and over each shoulder and under her arms. The tight shoulder straps emphasized her breasts, which he’d already surveyed more than once.
After a few more instructions, their plane was in the air, climbing and making a wide loop to the south, passing by the northern shore of Lake Trasimeno, a blue mirror of the sky. He pointed to Isola Maggiore, Major Island. “Not a very imaginative name.”
“In Italian, everything sounds romantic. It doesn’t have to sound imaginative,” Lindsey said.
At an altitude of six thousand meters, Marko attached Lindsey’s clips to his own straps in four places, powerfully connecting the two of them. He stood beside her as the others were lining up beside the transport door. One of the jumpers accidentally bumped Lindsey backward, thrusting her body against Marko. He was surprised to feel her shaking. Could the female daredevil be frightened?
He spoke softly into her ear, “Would you like to just watch this first time?”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “Of course not! I’m making this jump.” She shoved her goggles down over her eyes.
He did likewise. The door opened and the formation divers leaped from the plane, yelling and whooping. The plane began dropping and quickly reached five thousand meters.
“Okay, your turn,” Claudio yelled.
“Jump,” Marko said.
They made a paired spring into the sky. Arms like wings, they leaped into icy wind. In belly-to-earth position, they would drop for sixty seconds. Strands of her hair slipped out and lashed at his face a little. Her legs spread apart, and he hovered over her as if about to mount her in their free fall over the patchwork terrain below. They kept touching in places, her backside bumping at his groin. It was both erotic and exhilarating.
To the south, puffy arcs of color opened. The formation flyers. Marko yanked their cord also. With a jerk, their canopy wing chute opened. He held Lindsey around the waist to guide her upright. They floated gloriously as the earth approached, bumped down only a few feet off the assigned target.
Lindsey