Death Echo

repeatedly distanced itself from any traceable connection with any U.S. intel agency. The targets won’t be looking for you. They sure as bloody hell are looking for us. We don’t have anyone on the ground who isn’t being followed.”
    Emma kept her mouth shut because she hated agreeing with the other woman. Nothing personal. Just past experience. The officers and agents she had worked with all over the world had been decent people…at the lower levels. The further she went up the food chain, the less trustworthy the bosses became. Again, nothing personal. Just the Darwinian facts of survival in a highly politicized workplace whose rules changed with every headline.
    â€œDo you have anything else you can tell St. Kilda?” Steele asked.
    â€œNot at the present time,” Alara said.
    Emma made a rude sound.
    Steele didn’t bother.
    â€œYou aren’t required to help,” Alara pointed out.
    â€œBut it sure is hard to do business in the U.S. when everyone who works for St. Kilda is audited quarterly,” Emma said, “when St. Kilda personnel are stopped at the border, or their passports are jerked, or their driver’s license is revoked, their spouse fired, and every business that approaches St. Kilda is warned not—”
    Steele held up his hand.
    Emma swallowed the rest of her rant and waited. Steele knew how harassment worked. Good old Uncle’s bureaucrats could hound St. Kilda to death. Literally.
    â€œThat’s the price of living in a society you can’t fit around a campfire,” Alara said to Emma. “Cooperation is required in reality if not in law. Ambassador Steele knows this. Why don’t you?”
    Emma hoped her teeth weren’t leaving skid marks on her tongue. She really wanted to unload on the older woman.
    Because Alara was right. “Reality is a bitch, and she is always in heat,” Alara said. “When all else fails, you can count on that.” She glanced at her watch. “In or out?”
    Steele rolled his chair to face Emma. “You’re off the hook on this one. Be prepared to brief another St. Kilda employee in less than an hour.”
    â€œNo,” Emma said. “I’m in.”
    â€œI don’t want someone whose head isn’t in the game,” Alara said.
    â€œNo worries.” Emma’s smile was thin as a knife. “I’ve learned to use my head, not my heart. I’m in unless Steele says otherwise.”
    â€œYou’re in,” Steele said.
    â€œSeven days, which began counting down at midnight,” Alara said, coming to her feet. “When the time is up, be prepared for panic and chaos. If we’re lucky, the deaths will be under ten thousand.” She looked at Emma with cold black eyes. “Be smarter than your mouth.”

1
    DAY ONE
SEATTLE
AFTERNOON
    E mma Cross gripped the round chromed bars of the pitching Zodiac’s radar bridge as it raced over the Puget Sound, twenty miles beyond Elliott Bay. St. Kilda Consulting had assured her that the boat driver was capable. But Joe Faroe hadn’t mentioned that the dude called Josh didn’t look old enough to drink.
    Was I that young once?
    Yeah, I must have been. Scary thought. You can make some shockingly dumb, entirely legal decisions at that age.
    I sure did.
    Josh must have, too. His eyes are a lot older than his body.
    She had seen too many men like him while she worked as a case officer in places where local wars made headlines half a world away, innocents were blown to bloody rags, and nothing really changed.
    Except her. She’d finally gotten out. Tribal wars had been burning along before she joined the CIA. The wars were still burning just fine without her. World without end, amen.
    Until Alara had dropped into St. Kilda’s life.
    She has to be wrong, Emma told herself. God knows it wouldn’t be the first time intel was bad.
    But if she’s right…
    The thought sent a chill through Emma that had nothing do with the cold water just inches away.
    Seven days.
    Automatically she hung on as the Zodiac bounced and skidded on the wake of a ship that was already miles behind them, headed for Elliott Bay’s muscular waterfront. She pulled her thoughts away from what she couldn’t change to what she might change.
    Emma tapped the driver and shouted over the roar of the huge outboard engines. “Shut it down.”
    He eased off the throttle. The boat slid down off