Death Echo

the job at hand. It was hard.
    Way too hard.
    Faroe, are you nucking futz? She’s too much woman for this game.
    Then Mac thought of Grace. That, too, was a lot of woman. And it didn’t get in the way of her brains one bit. Or Faroe’s.
    Count backward by sevens.
    Ninety-three, eighty-six, seventy-nine…

29
    DAY FOUR
ROSARIO
5:35 A.M .
    G race Silva-Faroe leaned back on the uncomfortable motel couch. Annalise lay in her arms, drooling on her momma’s dark green blouse, blissed out and blowing bubbles.
    Faroe scrambled eggs in the kitchenette, sent the toast on another round trip, and watched the computer he’d set up next to the tiny stove. Information scrolled by at a speed that would have made a lot of people dizzy. Faroe just read, absorbed, and made breakfast. When there was a break in the information stream, he looked over his shoulder.
    â€œNice work, amada, ” he said, grinning at Grace and his relaxed daughter.
    Grace just smiled and stroked Annalise’s silky, wild mop of hair.
    â€œWill she sleep long?” he asked.
    â€œShould be out for hours,” Grace said. “She spent most of yesterday and last night exploring for forbidden fruit.”
    â€œI like her priorities. Want to snuggle her some more or should I put her in the playpen?”
    â€œDid the long-distance shot you got of the dude yesterday morning—what’s his name—the guy with the cousins get any hits?”
    Faroe fielded the change of subject without hesitation. “Temuri.Research ran it through St. Kilda’s magic computers. Because he’s playing nice, Steele sent a digital copy to Alara and the FBI as soon as we knew.”
    Grace’s lazy stroking of Annalise’s relaxed body stopped. “The FBI? What did Alara think about that?”
    â€œNo backwash that I know of. Hell, she probably did the same herself. Think of it as a bit of polite ass-covering. The FBI is still doing push-ups over that rez execution. Since St. Kilda just happened to be here on a different matter, we felt duty bound to point out to the FBI a possible connection with the new killer in town.”
    The judge that Grace had once been couldn’t help pointing out, “We don’t know he’s a killer.”
    â€œI’ll take Mac’s word for it. That boy has the training to sort out the wannabes from the shooters.”
    She sighed and didn’t disagree. “What did research find on Temuri, under all spelling variants?”
    â€œHis first name is Shurik—street name of Sure to his fellow thugs who happen to speak some dialect of English. He’s a snake-mean son of a bitch who appears in the top fifteen of nearly all the international shit lists.”
    â€œGood thing your daughter is asleep.”
    Faroe smiled. “No matter how much we shelter her, her peers will tell her all the forbidden words by the time she hits first grade.”
    â€œIn several languages,” Grace agreed wryly. “Anything useful on Temuri, besides his likelihood of going directly to hell?”
    â€œHe’s either Georgian or Ukrainian, depending on if you’re talking about his mother or his father. Like a lot of men who made fortunes in the wild economic frontier of the Former Soviet Union, he comes from a long line of former KGB turned businessmen/crime bosses.”
    â€œI’m shocked,” Grace said, kissing her daughter’s soft cheek.
    â€œMe, too. Daddy Temuri picked the wrong side of the Putin/Georgian wars, so son Temuri got an early start in the killing business. He’s good for seven hits that we know of, and suspected of a whole lot more. Did I mention that he’s as smart as he is deadly? Rich, too, with enough cash in offshore accounts that if/when Russian tanks start rolling into Georgia, he’ll be positioned to disappear or become a nuclear thorn in Russia’s flesh. Dealer’s choice, and the guys with the nukes do the dealing.”
    â€œIn other words, one more region with a grudge backed up by thugs with nukes. Sweet. How did he get his radioactive toys?”
    â€œProbably the usual way—theft from failed Soviet-era nuclear installations and/or purchase on the international arms black market. Ditto for chemical and biological weapons. Anyone who thinks all those goodies are under lock and key is living on Planet Denial.”
    Grace sighed. Time to leave Denial and reenter the other world, the one beyond