The Hunted

She sensed him before she saw him. A middle-aged man in a nice gray wool suit was staring at her. A quick glance in his direction, and he looked away. She took the ticket envelope from the smiling Continental representative and walked briskly in the direction of the VIP room. She kept her back turned to him for a few moments, then performed a pirouette that would earn a standing ovation. She looked him dead in the eye. The man almost jumped, before, suddenly, he discovered something on the magazine rack more interesting than her.

Her first thought was to scream. Just aim her arm at the man in the suit and scream full blast until her lungs hurt, until airport security rushed over to see what the fuss was about.

She kept walking instead. There was a knot in her throat and she tried hard to ignore it. She was an attractive woman, after all. Men stared at her: so what? She usually just ignored them. She was just on edge, she told herself. Paranoid people see big toothy monsters with lethal claws where others see squirrels. Maybe that's all it was, a sad, lonely little squirrel checking out the talent and dreaming of what would never be. She arrived at the door to the VIP room, looked back over her shoulder again, and there he was again, brazenly walking toward her! A little smarter, because his face was covered with a magazine. But the gray suit was a dead giveaway.

She was just raising her arm and preparing an earthshaking scream, when a firm hand grabbed her from behind. Panic enveloped her chest. She spun around, ready to kick and slap and howl like hell-it was Alex. "Don't worry about him, honey. Come on, step inside."

She stepped through the doorway and followed Alex to a table by the near wall, far away from the windows. Another man, this one in a blue wool suit, was seated, with his back against the wall, looping peanuts into his mouth. "Good morning, Mrs. Konevitch," he said, grinning between hard crunches. "I'm Eric. That fella outside's Jacob. I don't want to imagine what you've been through the past eighteen hours, but your worries are over." Another peanut in the mouth. "Jacob's watching the door and inside this VIP lounge is my territory. No bragging, but we can handle whatever comes up." A gentle slap on his forehead for effect. "Oh yeah, we're your Malcolm Street boys." The accent and demeanor were obscenely American-a thick twang ruthlessly tortured the vowels, broad, confident smile, black hair, tall and well built. Eric was leaning back on the chair, trying to appear relaxed and carefree. But Elena, the dancer, missed nothing about the human form. The body was coiled, ready to leap the length of the room and snap necks if the situation required. Ruthless blue eyes that never stopped wandering even as he spoke to her.

"Come on, Mrs. Konevitch, relax. You're safe. Take a load off your feet, please." He shoved a chair back with one hand, while the other hand plopped another peanut into the air; it sailed a full six feet before it fell and landed effortlessly in his mouth. His eyes never stopped darting around the room.

Elena nearly fell on her knees and kissed him. Eric in the nicely tailored blue suit could probably shoot with both hands simultaneously, hurl knives with his feet, and work an impossibly difficult crossword puzzle without missing a vowel. Let the bad guys try anything now. Eric would stack their bodies like cordwood.

The peanut fling was Eric's favorite trick, one that never failed to put the client at ease. That big lapdog smile again. "Fix yourself a cup of coffee. Don't skip them pastries, either," he suggested. Another peanut in the air-whoosh, it landed and was instantly compacted between two fierce incisors.

Alex took her arm. "Let's get a cup of coffee and talk."

They moved hand in hand to another wall where a wooden table sagged under the weight of coffee and tea urns, an enormous stack of pastries, and large containers loaded with eggs, bacon, flatcakes, and a few mushy concoctions unidentifiable to anybody but a Slovakian native. The smell of fresh-ground coffee was impossible to ignore. The only thing keeping her on her feet was the five cups she had swallowed at the cafe.

That half-life had expired an hour before.

Alex handed her a cup and saucer. "When I called the headquarters of Malcolm Street last night, they were in the midst of a meeting about our situation. A witness claimed I murdered my own security escort back at the Budapest Airport. It's-"

"What? That's ridiculous, Alex. Who claimed that?"

"A woman. A Russian woman. Her story was corroborated by her Russian boyfriend."

"Ridiculous. They murdered your bodyguard and now they're blaming it on you?"

"Yes, with a poisoned dagger, probably at the same moment as the kidnap. The security firm is dispatching a team to clear this up with the Hungarian authorities. There are big holes in the story. The woman's passport is a phony. The hit was professional and I'm an amateur. They're confident they can make this disappear."