Point of No Return Read Online Free Page B

me, and throw in a little torture—just for payback—before he beheads me, of course.” Deep breaths, in, out… Chet tapped the phone on his leg.
    â€œI don’t understand—if you helped the Svan, and Akif was their leader, why would he want you dead?”
    Chet shook his head. Leave it, Wick.
    Wick’s eyes narrowed just a second before he betrayed him. “Let’s just say that Akif had a daughter, who fell in love with Chet.”
    Chet drew in a breath. “Yes, something like that.”
    Wick reached over and tugged the cell from his whitened grip, dropping it into the cup holder. “Mae will be fine.”
    â€œShe won’t be fine.” Chet flexed his hands. “But if I set foot in that part of the world, Bashim will know it. And neither of us will get out of Georgia alive.”
    â€œYou can’t go, boss,” Luke said quietly.
    Chet leaned his head back against his seat, closing his eyes, and almost instantly Mae appeared, her green eyes bright, her red hair ribboning down her back, her skin sweet and tangy, her soft laughter like a balm on his calloused heart, smiling as he waltzed her around the dance floor of Viktor and Gracie’s wedding reception. Their last magical moment.
    Before she dumped the drink over his head.
    He ran his finger and thumb over his eyes, dispelling the image. “But can I live with myself if I don’t?”

TWO
    C het blamed his stupidity on his fatigue and the fact that he’d spent twelve hours on a train staring at the ceiling of his sterile compartment, listening to Wick snore, and trying not to imagine Mae disembarking in the Georgia airport in Tbilisi to Russian gunpoint.
    No, he’d thought he was overreacting. The gun pointing wouldn’t start until she got to Gori and met one of the trigger-nervous eighteen-year-old Russian “brown boys” supposedly “peacekeeping” along the Ossetia-Georgian border. He’d read the papers over the past few months. “Peacekeeping” seemed to be a euphemism for “daily terrorist attacks.” These days, regions of Georgia bore a strong resemblance to some areas of Iraq.
    And hadn’t that been a comforting thought at 2:00 a.m. as they’d crossed the Berlin border into the Czech Republic? Chet had found himself staring out the window at the dark, rolling countryside of Europe, seeing instead the sweeping hills of Ossetia, rimmed by the jagged, snowy peaks of the Caucasus Mountains to the north. Ageless villages, nestled in the nooks and crannies of mountains lush with fir trees, each centered on a lone, stone church. He could nearly smell the lamb kebobs roasting over an open pit, or baking Khachapuri, dripping with cheese. He could hear children laughing as they bicycled through the village, just outside his window, open to the spring air.
    But every memory of Georgia ended with the staccato roll of a Kalashnikov being chambered.
    He’d closed his eyes, breathing out the past.
    No, sleep, regardless of how inviting, hadn’t been a great idea. Not if he ended up rolling in his sheets, lathered in a cold sweat, screaming. Just what Wick and the rest of his team needed for inspiration.
    Instead, Chet had focused on figuring out a way to get into Georgia, sans capture, track down Mae and talk her—or throw her—out of the country.
    No wonder he hadn’t gotten any sleep on that train. And no wonder, when he’d shoved his key into his office headquarters, he didn’t realize that the security system hadn’t beeped. He’d just pushed his way inside the sparse and dreary three-room flat, dropped his gear on the checkerboard red and black floor, and reached for the light.
    It shed the barest luminescence over his dismal office. He’d turned a fifteenth-century, three-room residence into his headquarters. The largest room, flanked by two ornate French doors, housing his black prefab desk, his computer, a