“Not true. And you can’t try to take over. You have to let Tanner handle it.”

Lara opened her lips to protest. Then she closed them and fastened her seat belt. “But I’ll talk to him later if I can’t get an answer from Mallory.”

“You do that.” She leaned back in her seat as the plane’s engines started and the aircraft started to taxi. “And we’ll see how far you get and that will tell us something, too.” She opened her computer. “In the meantime, I’ll look up this Connecticut and see where he’s taking us…”

* * *

“Your after-breakfast tea,” Mallory said as he set the cups on their trays. “Can I get you anything else?”

“No, but you can go and ask Tanner if there’s a problem,” Lara said. “He hasn’t stuck his head out of the cockpit since we took off.”

He held up his hand. “I’m ahead of you. I called him from the galley. There’s no real problem, but he heard from Sorens, one of the men we left to keep an eye on what Volkov was doing. Anton is moving fast and asking lots of questions. They knew you left in a helicopter and they found the heliport we leased it from. It will take them longer to trace it to the private airport where we boarded this jet, but they’ll get there. We just have to hope they don’t do it before we get to Connecticut and can tuck the jet in a hangar.”

“How long will that be?”

“About eleven hours. But they’ll have to trace it first to Stockholm, and that will give us more time.” He added gently, “Tanner knows what he’s doing. He’s done it many times before, and he’s never lost an extraction. He won’t lose you, Lara.”

“Is she giving you a hard time?” Tanner was coming down the aisle toward them. “I thought she might. I’m surprised that she didn’t have you bounding into the cockpit to grill me.”

“I was planning on doing it myself,” she said. “You could have given me a report on what was happening. You should have known that I’d suspect something was off kilter when you were orchestrating a simple breakfast with such military precision.”

“Heaven forbid you just assume I’d tell you if there was anything really to worry about.” He paused. “Or that perhaps I had something else in mind.” He turned and headed for the back of the plane. “Come along. Let’s get this over. I want to make sure I haven’t screwed this up.”

“What?” She didn’t move. “Screwed what up?”

He looked over his shoulder. “I made you a promise, didn’t I?” He suddenly smiled teasingly. “Come and see if I kept it.”

She got to her feet. “I will.” She glanced at Maria. “I’ll be right back.”

“She can follow us if she likes.” Tanner was already halfway down the aisle. “Maybe she can protect me from your wrath if I didn’t do it right.” He stopped and gestured to the four seats opposite the galley opening. “But I did the best I could considering the time constraints.”