My Dangerous Valentine by Carolyn McCray Page A

mall ? Buying a latte, of all things? And why had he warned her? About the only thing the USSR and the USA agreed upon was the danger of China. Were the Chinese here, as well?
    “He went toward the restrooms,” Trinka informed her.
    Val turned to the harried woman in front of her. “Can you hold my place?”
    The woman seemed to notice her for the first time. “Sure.”
    Val took off down the mall, passing three shoe stores and a tattoo shop. When did tattoos become mainstream enough to show up in a mall? Kind of undercut the rebellious nature of ink, didn’t it? Even parental rebellion had turned corporate.
    But she wasn’t here to provide cultural commentary. She was here to find out why a foreign agent was on US soil.
    “Trinka, I need to know if he’s got his team with him.”
    “I’m running facial recognition software already.”
    “And the Chinese—run the footage against all foreign operatives.”
    “Will do,” Trinka answered, sounding a little caffeinated herself.
    “I’ve got to say though, Ukav wasn’t hiding,” Trinka explained. “He looked up, full-face, into the first camera he encountered.”
    Yes, there was nothing stealthy about how he had revealed himself to Val. So un-KGB-like. They were usually ghosts. And equally as hard to document as apparitions.
    Val arrived at the barren hallway that led to the bathrooms. “Which way?”
    “He went in the women’s restroom,” Trinka said, then hurried on. “But he put something on the payphone hook.”
    Cautiously, Valentine walked up to the payphone. Was it a trap? It didn’t feel very sophisticated, though, and Ukav was nothing but sophisticated in his approach. Gulping, Val put her hand on the phone and jerked it from its cradle. No bombs. No explosions. Not even a shock. Ukav must be getting rusty.
    Instead, she found a sticky note attached to the lever. It was in Cyrillic. Val was fluent in a lot of languages, but written Cyrillic? Was Ukav busting her chops? She took a picture of it and sent it to Trinka.
    “Um, the note says ‘run.’”
    Well, that wasn’t going to happen. Val headed to the women’s restroom. She pulled her gun from its thigh holster before carefully opening the door. The restroom appeared empty. She checked each stall just to be sure. He was nowhere to be seen. The only evidence of his passing was a loose vent.
    “He’s gone up,” Val relayed to Trinka.
    Climbing up on a toilet, Val checked her gun to make sure there was a bullet in the chamber. She had a knife in her boot, of course, but would it be enough? She still sported a nasty scar on her ribcage from one of Ukav’s bullets. Just because he was warning her off didn’t mean he wouldn’t kill her if she got in the way of his mission.
    Without hesitation.
    The scar under her bra, chafing, was proof positive.
    “I’m going in,” Val informed Trinka.
    “Roger that,” the petite tech replied. Such military terms sounded so odd coming out of such a cutie.
    Stepping onto a toilet, Val made her way up into the duct. Penlight in her mouth, she swept the light back and forth. Scrape marks went west, so she went west. She followed the trail until she came to a junction in the ducts. Right in the middle of the crossroads was a grate that had been removed. Clearly, Ukav had gone down. She checked the opposite grate to find rope marks in the grime. He had brought repelling equipment.
    Funny, she hadn’t. Wonder why? Maybe because she was just trying to get her Christmas shopping done. Was a little heads up too much to ask?
    The shaft went straight down into the bowels of the building.
    “I’m going down.”
    “Holy crap,” Trinka announced.
    Yes, it was a steep climb, but that reaction seemed a little out of context. “Trinka, what’s wrong?”
    “Ukav isn’t the only foreign agent here.”
    “Okay…”
    “We’ve got three men from the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami in the mall.”
    Holy crap was right. The Harkats were hardcore terrorists. “From