Free The Fallen: A Derek Stillwater Thriller by Mark Terry Page A

golds, but he didn’t lose consciousness. He struggled to sit up, but everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. The freezer door closed. When it reopened, Coffee dragged Macklin’s body in, followed shortly afterward by the bodies of Bill Creff and Joe Snyder.
    Coffee disappeared for a moment. Derek’s vision doubled, tripled,then returned to normal, though his skull throbbed and blood leaked down his forehead. Not as bad as Macklin, he thought, and turned away from the sight of her obliterated features.
    Suddenly the door swung open and Coffee stepped through again. He reached down and hauled Derek to his feet. He slammed him against the stainless steel door and pressed the barrel of the gun under his chin.
    “Not dead after all.”
    Derek didn’t reply.
    “Are you frightened, Derek? Knees shaky? Is this how Nadia felt when you tortured her to death? Helpless?”
    Derek’s mind raced. The still-hot barrel of the silenced gun burned into his jaw. “She’s—not—dead.”
    Coffee’s face twisted in unexpected shock. He smashed the butt of the gun against Derek’s jaw. “What did you say?”
    Stumbling to the cold metal floor, Derek tried to suck air into his lungs. His pulse hammered in his ears, blood roaring through his veins. “She’s not dead,” he said, wondering if the blow had broken his jaw. His speech seemed a little slurred. “They have her. The FBI.”
    “She’s dead! You murdered her!”
    Coffee was in his face. The icy control he so casually wore was only a thin veneer over insanity. Derek stared up at him, feeling calmer. “She’s not dead, Richard. She’s at Guantanamo with the rest of The Fallen Angels we captured in Alexandria.”
    “You lie!” The gun rose and fell again. This time Derek slumped to the floor, his vision blurring, unable to get up with his arms behind his back.
    “You lie!”
    Derek shook his head and instantly regretted the movement. “No,” he grunted out. “She’s alive. Just like I am.”
    Coffee spun in circles like a child unsure which direction to go. He flexed his arms in frustration, staring down at Derek at his feet. He raised the gun, aimed it—
    He glanced at his watch and seemed to reconsider. “Fucker!” he coughed. “I’ll be back for you later! You will tell me the truth about Nadia.” Coffee reached down and ripped Derek’s Iridium phone off his belt, dropped it to the floor and stomped it into pieces.
    And Coffee was gone, the metal door of the freezer slamming shut behind him. Derek heard a metallic clank, then nothing.
    Nadia Kosov, thought Derek. We really do get punished for our sins. Nadia Kosov had been Richard Coffee’s common-law wife. She had tried to first recruit Derek to The Fallen Angels, and when that didn’t work, tried to kill him. Derek had overpowered her and interrogated her—that was the official word for what amounted to torture—only she had accidentally died before revealing what she knew.
    Derek was using this knowledge to keep Coffee at bay. He was using what must be a last desperate hope in Coffee’s diseased brain to barter for his life.
    If Coffee knew the truth, if he abandoned all hope that Nadia might be alive in a maximum-security prison cell somewhere, then he would put a bullet in Derek’s head without blinking an eye.
    Derek had some slim hope that their old friendship would at least make Coffee hesitate to kill him. But it was a hope as slim and as fragile as swamp grass and just as likely to bend, break, or pull from the muck as it was to hold. It was not something Derek wanted to wager his life on.
    He stared at the pile of corpses, wondering which one had the keys to the handcuffs. Ignoring the lightning bolts of pain jolting through his skull, he squirmed toward the agent who had cuffed him.

Chapter 24
    Irina Khournikova stood outside the entrance to the International Center with one of her fellow FSB security agents, Ivan Petrovitch. Coming toward the resort was a fleet of Sikorsky