Chapter One

      Just after four o’clock in the afternoon, Riley Lansing slipped in through the back entrance of the Marriott Marquis hotel in downtown Washington, DC. She wore a stolen employee badge and one of the dresses required of the female waitstaff. With her dark hair tucked beneath a blond wig, she passed for the woman in the fuzzy image sufficiently enough to make it past the security guard.

      She carried a large purse and smacked chewing gum. When the guard asked to search her bag, she made certain her less-than-sexy panties and feminine products were on top to discourage him from digging deeper and discovering her second costume of the night.

      Her trick worked. The guard waved her past the checkpoint.

      Riley sailed through and entered the employee locker room. Instead of ditching her bag, she carried it through to the door on the far side that led deeper into the hotel’s service area.

      Riley’s heart pounded against her ears, and her pulse thundered through her veins. She’d trained most of her young life for this. Her mother and father had drilled her daily on her responsibilities and loyalties. But Riley had hoped and prayed she would be forgotten, shuffled into the far regions of some paper file that had never been converted to digital data.

      All the years she’d immersed herself in the American life her parents had created for her, with their own false identities and her legitimate birth certificate, were about to be blown wide open. No one she’d come into contact with over her lifetime knew her as anyone but Riley Lansing, daughter of Linda and Robert Lansing. Her parents spoke perfect American English and appeared to be the finest of upstanding citizens of the good old US of A.

      Only they weren’t. She wasn’t. Her life had been one big lie, leading up to what she’d been tasked to do that evening.

      Why now? Why, after the deaths of her father and mother in an auto accident five years earlier, had they come back to call her to service? Riley had hoped her parents’ handler had forgotten their daughter and her little brother even existed.

      She’d pushed her secret life to the back of her consciousness for so long, she almost believed it was all a weird dream made up from a child’s wild imagination.

      Until that morning, when she’d received the electronically distorted message from an anonymous voice initiating her call to action. “Baryshnikov has risen.”

      At first, she hadn’t recognized the code words. When they sank in from the years her father had repeated them, a chill raised the hairs on the back of her neck and rippled down the length of her spine.

      “You will find instructions at the luggage storage area at the Metro in downtown DC.” The voice left an address and locker number. “And to guarantee your compliance, we have a little insurance policy.”

      A moment later, little Toby’s voice came through the receiver. “Riley?” he said, the one word catching on a sob. “I’m scared.”

      “Oh, Toby. Sweetheart,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m coming for you. I’ll find you and bring you home.”

      Her little brother sobbed once more, jerking at Riley’s heartstrings.

      “Toby?” Riley cried out.

      “Do the job tonight and the boy will be returned to his home,” the voice said. “Fail and you will never see him again.”

      Clutching the large bag close to her side, she hurried through the maze of corridors she’d traversed the day before, familiarizing herself with the layout of the kitchen, the staff elevators and the ballroom where the evening’s event would take place. She’d even identified an electronics closet where she could hide until the event began, ensuring she’d be past the security guards who would be posted at every entrance and exit checking identification against invitation lists.

      The second worst part of her plan was the two hours she’d have to wait until she could initiate the operation.

      The absolute worst part of her plan was the crux of the operation and what she had to accomplish to satisfy her handler and get her little brother back alive.

      To succeed at her mission, she had to kill someone she not only knew but admired.

      Her hand shook as she slipped a file into the keyhole and jimmied the lock on the door to the electronics closet. It clicked, and she pulled the door open. She’d played with locks from an early age and could open just about anything requiring a key. This skill had come in handy during college when she entered her dorm past curfew and the doors were locked.

      Once inside the electronics room, she closed the door and locked it from the inside to keep anyone from randomly walking in looking for something or someone.

      For the next two and a half hours, she waited. The security detail would have swept the ballroom and surrounding cubbies, restrooms, hallways and anterooms. Guards would have been positioned at all corners, equipped with radio communications devices and handguns.

      Her target would have no fewer than four bodyguards in attendance. Having had an attempt made on her life recently, she wouldn’t take any chances. Not even at a gala with the prime purpose of raising money for sick children.

      During the two hours Riley waited, she went through her proposed actions in her mind, the steps she would take and how she would maneuver her victim out of the ballroom and into one of the anterooms or the ladies’ restroom. Once there, Riley would aim her small handgun at the woman and force her to take a small pill. She slipped her hand into the voluminous purse and curled her fingers around the HK .40 caliber handgun that fit snugly in her grip. She knew how to fire it. Knew where to hit her target to ensure a quick and painless death. But she wouldn’t fire the handgun unless absolutely necessary. The poison would do the trick much more quietly. All she had to do was make her take it, and Toby would be set free.

      She couldn’t think about the woman she’d been sent to eliminate. Toby was only six years old. He deserved a chance to live. If it meant taking the life of an older woman who’d had her chance at living, so be it. Riley couldn’t let anything happen to her only living relative remaining on earth. As far as she knew, Toby didn’t know what her parents and she herself had been recruited to do.

      No one knew, except Riley and her handler. And Riley had no clue who her handler was. When her parents died, she’d taken on guardianship of her little brother. She should have known hiding him in the Virginia countryside with a paid nanny wouldn’t be enough to keep him safe. When her parents had passed away, she should have moved as far away from DC as she could get. At least then the Russians wouldn’t have been able to find Toby and use him as collateral to collect on their investment.

      As the time neared, her breathing became more erratic and her pulse raced. In less than an hour, she’d have to put her skills as an assassin to use on an innocent woman who had gone out of her way, spent her money and engaged her employees to help Riley. She’d