Free The Spy Who Saved Christmas by Dana Marton

say stay back, you stay back. And whether I say it or not, you’ll stay quiet and stay out of the way.” His warm cinnamon gaze turned to cold quartz crystal and held hers. “If there’s trouble, you run. I’ll worry about Zak and Nate.”
    “Who will worry about you?”
    “Nobody needs to worry about me.”
    The way he looked just then, a rock of determination and strength, she could almost believe him.
    “So take whatever last chance we have here to rest. We’ll both need all our focus and strength,” he told her, his voice softening with patience.
    She took off her coat. He ordered food. They ate. She didn’t taste any of it. Five minutes later, she couldn’t have said for a million dollars what the toppings on the pizza had been. The air was filled with tension. Her accusations of him, her blaming him for what had happened were part of that. She knew she wasn’t being entirely reasonable, but she was too petrified for her babies, too emotionally wrung out to take the words back.
    All she could do was stare out the window at the cops who were milling around the house. Were they still hoping to find some clues out there, or were they here for protection? She asked Reid.
    He shrugged. “Both, I’m guessing.”
    He kept checking his e-mail. Nothing was coming in. He paced the room for hours on end. When darkness fell, he ordered food again. The cops left, but an unmarked police car with two plainclothes officers was now parked in front of the house.
    Every time Reid’s phone rang, she jumped. But it was never a call that brought any answers.
    “The kidnappers didn’t say when they were calling back?” she asked for at least the third time.
    He shook his head. “Go to bed. Get some rest.”
    “I can’t.” She kept staring out the window at a row of streetlights, hoping that somehow, by some miracle, she would see her babies being brought back.
    She chewed every nail she had down to bloody stumps, and she’d never chewed her nails in her life. She was ready to start pulling her hair out by the time midnight rolled around and Reid’s phone rang again.
    He picked up and listened for ten or fifteen minutes with only the occasional, brief question. “Okay. Thanks.” He hung up, then looked at a picture of a man on the phone’s display. “They might have found the virus.”
    She’d been hoping for, we have the babies, but this was something. At least they were heading in the right direction. “Where?”
    “At a fertility clinic not far from here. A friend of a friend knows a guy, Jason Wurst, who’s sold something like this abroad before to supplement his research grant. Couldn’t pin it on him at the time, but the man who investigated the case swears by it.”
    She stared. “An ob-gyn?” What did that have to do with deadly viruses?
    “Not exactly. A hard of his luck scientist who helps out at the clinic so he has access to the cryogenic freezer. His ex-wife worked on the original project for the government. She died of unknown causes a few months after the project was closed. I’m guessing our Jason here blames the government, whether or not her death was related.”
    “You think the wife told him about the project? Wouldn’t that be confidential?”
    “She might have found talking about it irresistible. They were both top scientists at one time. Or she, too, might have blamed the government for falling sick and told her husband in some last, desperate act before her death.”
    “So he figured out how to make the virus and whipped up a batch. Do you think he still has it with him?”
    “Unless our bad guys have a cryogenic freezer at home next to their beer coolers, they wouldn’t pick the virus up until the last second, when they’re ready to distribute it.”
    She was on her way to the door. Reid cut in front of her, made sure it was safe to leave before they went to the car, nodding to the cops who were still outside.
    “It’d be better if you stayed here with them.” He made a