Killing a prominent executive Jack Hagen was pointless and would draw the kind of attention Wood didn’t want, so the phone call was the best way to go. Jack, because he wanted to fuck Ziya, agreed enthusiastically and never showed up.
Which left Wood with only one thing to do.
Meet Ziya.
Ziya walked out of her hotel and into the car when Wood appeared at her elbow.
“Good morning, m’am. Your ride is here.” Wood smiled pleasantly.
Ziya smiled, shook her head. A glow to her face that Wood couldn’t exactly place.
“Great. The Tibet Hotel, please. I’m in a bit of a hurry to meet someone.
She glanced at the nametag on her chauffeur. “Chen-li.”
Wood produced the small but deadly snub-nosed revolver that was in the coat pocket of the uniform and said, still smiling pleasantly, “You’re meeting me, Ziya Maarten. Isn’t this exactly what you wanted? To meet me your sibling?”
~~~~~
Ziya’s eyes widened as all the color fled from her face, leaving her ashen-faced and sickly.
Around them, the street was alive with people’s chatter and the drone of vehicles moving through peak hour traffic.
She swallowed.
Wood leaned in close and murmured in the sister’s ear, “Move when I tell you and I won’t shoot you through the spine. All right, sister dear?”
Ziya nodded. And moved.
Wood smiled as they got into the car, Ziya at the back, while Wood backed them out of the hotel parking lot with skill.
Wood stopped the car at the back of the Tibet Hotel, in the deserted back alley, where all the refuse from the restaurants was dumped in a congealing mass of garbage that was collected every third day.
Wood activated the cell-phone jamming device Wood always carried so that Ziya’s cell phone would be of no help to track her whereabouts. But, there was a satellite dish and antenna on the comm link so Wood knew she was lo-jacked in some other way.
Wood backed Ziya to one such Dumpster and said, conversationally, “If you’re packing heat, turn it over now, I won’t hurt you.”
Ziya shook her head. “I’m not armed,” she said.
Wood smiled. “Great. And, where’s the locator chip?”
Ziya widened her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Wood smacked her once, so hard that her temple hit the edge of the Dumpster and her knees almost gave out.
~~~~~
Ziya clutched wildly behind her and her hands stuck in gooey garbage. She cried out in revulsion and dismay.
“Tell me what they have stuck you with so I won’t have to do this again and again.”
“They will come for me,” she said, softly. “They will find me before you kill me.”
“I will cut your head here in this alley and take it home with me, Ziya, leaving the rest of you to rot here in this garbage heap if you don’t tell me what the fuck they planted on you.”
“Then that would nullify whatever game you’re playing here.”
Wood looked sideways at the defiant expression on Ziya’s face as she spat out words like bullets.
“I want you dead. There is no game. The only question is if you want to die right here, right now or if you want to have all your questions answered before I kill you. So I ask you again, Ziya, tell me what they planted on you. And where is it?”
“I don’t—"
Wood slammed her head back and she slid in a heap down to the ground. Blood poured out of a wound that she sustained that Wood tried to stanch by holding a clean handkerchief to the back of her head.
“I will hit you over and over again until your brains splatter here if you don’t tell me, Ziya,” Wood said calmly. “They will only find you dead and bloodied here in the next three hundred seconds which is all it will take for me to bash your head in.”
Two fat tears of pain and resignation rolled out of Ziya’s eyes and she closed her eyes against them. “Small of my back. The tattoo.”
Wood sighed and turned Ziya around, supporting her all the while, and inched the shirt up to see the sexy Tibetan Om. Wood whistled in admiration at the ink. Wood touched the skin appreciatively and Ziya flinched.
“Nice. Very classy. Didn’t expect any less from you. Must have been your idea, the Om.”
As Wood spoke, Wood produced a small pocket knife, doused it with an airplane bottle of rum that Wood had forethought to pack along with the rest of the tools and then, plunged the knife into the small of her back.
Ziya’s reedy scream was cut off because Wood plugged the bloody handkerchief into her mouth. She cried softly as Wood twisted and turned the knife around till it hit something solid.
Wood widened the incision and Ziya’s eyes screamed in silent pain. Blood poured onto the white pants in a relentless stream.
She slumped in Wood’s arms.
Wood placed two careful fingers inside the wound and fished around till Wood found the chip and extracted it.
Ziya’s eyes rolled back at the pain and she passed out, mercifully.
Wood sighed, stroked her hair in an affectionate, loving gesture and then threw the chip into the refuse heap.
Then Wood left Ziya slumped near the garbage for a single minute.
Wood sprinted to the edge of the alley and wheeled out the souped-up Yamaha Wood had stashed here first thing this morning. Wood gunned the ignition and hauled the sister upright onto it in a one-handed grip that had sweat springing on Wood’s brow.
Then Wood removed a huge black sweatshirt, a men’s double XL and tugged it over the bleeding unconscious Ziya. She looked androgynous, no one, with the hoodie on. And more importantly, half her face and that damnably conspicuous hair were hidden.
Then, Wood maneuvered Ziya around to the front, and tucked her slack fingers over the handlebars, and the top of her head under Wood’s chin.
Then, Wood roared away with the sister before the three hundred seconds were up.
Wood stopped just outside of the airport limits at the first department store. Ziya was still unconscious, which Wood attributed to both the shock and blood loss.
The sweatshirt was torn off and became a sort of dressing and tourniquet on the wound and Wood dressed the sister in clean jeans and canvas shoes. Size six, a respectable number. The shirt remained because it was the color of blood and thus was camouflage itself.
Wood hotwired a parked car at the local store and dragged Ziya carefully to the backseat, placing her under the seat, but on her front so that the wound wouldn’t open. Tied her eyes, hands, feet and mouth too, but again, in such a way as to cause minimal pain.
And, using the clothes Wood had bought at the chain store, padded the side of the floor so that she could move without hurting herself.
Wood was not cruel, just practical.
Then, Wood checked the gas on the car, found the tank to be half-full. Wood discarded the boots, jeans and driver uniform and set everything on fire by the side of the highway behind a large tree.
The fire was still smoking acridly, when Wood got into the borrowed car and drove slowly, carefully, so as not to jostle Ziya unduly and hurt her even more, to the Lhasa-Gonggar airport, where she had landed not two days before..
With the beloved sister all trussed up like a beautiful birthday present for Wood to play with.
Wood couldn’t wait to begin playing with the sister.
Forty-Five
By the time, Ziya came to; her head was aching in a dull throbbing that refused to ease no matter how many breaths she took. She was aware of a stifling kind of darkness that came, not from lack of light but utter blindness. Her eyes were bound, she thought on the first edge of hysteria.
She was with The Woodpecker who had removed the GPS locator from her body as quickly as if the thing didn’t exist at all, as if Krivi was not the only man on earth skilled enough to break someone. Piece by piece.
Ziya felt swaddled, even though she knew she was bound and trussed up like a Christmas turkey.
>
Then, she closed her eyes because the worst had already happened.
The Woodpecker had caught her and was now going to kill her, because there was no way on heaven or earth that Krivi could find her now.
Ziya wanted to laugh, a hysterical, never-ending laugh as she thought of what was going to happen when they found out what The Woodpecker really was.
“So, you’re awake then,” Wood said, pleasantly.
Ziya started and tried to keep her breathing still and even. Wood yanked the blindfold off her eyes in a rough, jarring movement and Ziya couldn’t keep the wince off her face.
“We are safe now,” Wood continued, as if they were both fugitives, as if both of them had done something wrong. Both of them had to hide.
“I took you out of there in a way that no one is going to think of looking for you, Ziya. Jack thinks you’re going back to Kashmir on a work-related emergency and the Goons are probably going nuts trying to comb for the chip in that shit outside the Tibet Hotel.” Wood grinned. “Aren’t I a goddamn genius?”
Ziya took a deep shaky breath and tried to keep her expression neutral.
“Oh, sorry.” Wood reached over and removed the gag that bound her mouth with a gentler touch than the blindfold.
Wood stroked Ziya’s cracked lips.
“You need some chap stick,” Wood said absently.
“You’re a monster,” Ziya whispered, trying to sit up on the flat surface she found herself in.
She roved her eyes hither and thither, trying to make a grid, get a snapshot of where she was.
It was a small room, with stone walls and fired sconces instead of electric bulbs, so they were somewhere underground.
The air smelled of jet fuel and peanuts. There was no other piece of furniture in the room, except the saggy mattress she was struggling to sit on.
Wood solicitously helped sit her up, and propped her against the stone wall. “All better?”
Ziya didn’t answer.
“Do you want some water? I imagine your throat must be dessert-dry. I’m sorry.”
Wood stroked back some of the hair that fell on Ziya’s cheek. She swallowed all her revulsion and remained perfectly still.
“I shouldn’t have hit you so much. Do you hurt anywhere?”
Ziya understood instinctively that any offer of help from this sociopath would only come with more pain attached in the end so she shrugged.
“It’s bearable.”
Her head ached muzzily, but she didn’t let on by a twitch of her eyelid how much she actually hurt. Pain was going to be her friend here in this nightmare.
“All the same, I am sorry, Ziya.” Wood sighed, ran a hand down a jaw that was so remarkably like Ziya’s, she had no trouble believing they were siblings.
“I stitched the spine wound up, didn’t want it to get infected or anything.”
“Thank you.”
Ziya made her voice dryly polite, because some sort of response was expected.
“Now, what shall we talk about?”
NOOR. SAM. WHY DID YOU KILL THEM?
Ziya shrugged. “Whatever you want to talk about. I have nothing but time, don’t I?”
Wood smiled faintly, respect sliding into those cold, cod-fish eyes; killer eyes. “Did you have a good time in town? Sightseeing and shopping?”
Ziya shrugged again. “It was all right.”
“I had a good time too, following you. Watching you walk around the city, waiting for me to make an appearance. Introduce myself. How incredibly beautiful and naïve you are, Ziya.” Wood shook back a head of hair that was cut eerily close to Ziya’s style.
“They didn’t teach you that at Spy School, did they? What to do when the thing you want to happen actually happens?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Wood sighed, and punched Ziya in the stomach.
Ziya wheezed over, bending double from the well-placed punch and its pain. She glared at The Woodpecker, vengeful wrath shining in her silver-bright eyes.
“Honesty,” Wood said, mildly. “It’s the best policy, Ziya. I don’t want to hurt you. I truly don’t,” Wood assured her earnestly. “I won’t hurt you if you just talk to me. Just us siblings.”
Wood chuckled. “We can tell each other all our secrets, can’t we?”
Wood got up and began to pace the room.
Ziya’s head swam from the effort of being conscious.
“You’re my sister,” Wood said softly, whirling to a stop and looking intently at Ziya. “You’re my sister. My family. You are on my side, aren’t you?”
“You’re going to kill me,” she retorted back. “Why should I be on your side?”
Wood smiled, and it was an amused delighted smile. “You are so damn smart, Zee. Can I call you, Zee? It’s so short and sweet. Something that I can call my sister, isn’t it?”
Ziya tried to breathe through the pain as she remembered the last time Noor, her sister, her Noor had called her Zee. Just a day before she had sat in a car and exploded into nothingness because of a bomb this monster had created.
“You can call me anything you want. You hold all the aces here,” Ziya pointed out dryly.
“True that.” Wood grinned. “So, Zee, you’re so damn smart, I could so use the company here. I get bored all the time. Waiting around for a job, waiting for the trail to get cold, waiting for the contacts to get in place…just waiting. All the fucking time.”
Wood gave her a look of shared commiseration that Ziya did not return.
“Maybe, I don’t have to kill you. Maybe if you promised that you’d be okay with just I for company…well, Tom and me. Tom’s great. Tom’s going to love meeting you.” Wood enthused, the killer eyes bright with a madness that was just now beginning to seep out.
“Look,” Ziya said, tiredly. “Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with already?”
Wood chuckled, a gleeful, mad sound. “Where’s the fun in that, Zee? First, I want to break you. Like I broke the truth out of you. Then, when I’m bored with you, I’ll kill you. I get bored very easily,” Wood confided ruefully. “You’re not in for the long haul. But, till then…” Wood sighed. “I so wanted to have a sister all my life.”
“I am not your sister,” Ziya said quietly. Firmly. In finality.
“What?” Wood cocked a brow, more amused than offended. “You’re not?”
Ziya shook her head, even though the action split her skull in two and somewhere on her scalp, the head wound started bleeding again. “I am not your sister. I may be unfortunate enough to share my blood and DNA with you, but that’s as far as it goes. I am nothing like you. Nothing.”
“You’re my sister,” Wood repeated. “They recruited you because you’re my sister and they wanted your help to catch me.”
Ziya smiled, and it glittered like the sharp edges of a broadsword. “I volunteered myself. I wanted to help bring down the monster that killed Noor, my sister in my heart and her Sam. No one recruited me.”
~~~~~~
“Noor who?”
Wood frowned, because the serrated edge of a migraine was beginning to make itself felt on the bridges of Wood’s nose.
“Noor Saiyed and Major Sam Qureshi of the Indian Army. The two people who died in the explosion meant for Krivi Iyer.”
“Krivi’s dead.”
Ziya shook her head again. “He isn’t. He is coming for me. He is going to hunt you down till you don’t breathe. This I promise you.”
Wood breathed hard, a dull red mist beginning to form in Wood’s brain.
“You’re lying. You’re lying about Krivi living. That hot shot ex-spy is dead. He died in the bombing in London.”
Ziya smiled; a regretful smile that mocked The Woodpecker’s intelligence.
“You have your facts wrong,” she said calmly. “Krivi’s very much alive and on your scent, and thanks to your little stunt today, he is that much closer to finding you. He will find you, Woodpecker. Today, tomorrow, ten years from tom
orrow. He won’t rest till he finds you.”
The Woodpecker screamed in anger and slapped Ziya hard across her face, the slap echoing in the small cavern-like room.
“My. Name. Is.” Wood pummeled Ziya’s defenseless body with blows. “Hannah.”
“Hannah,” The Woodpecker screamed.
“Hannah.”
Ziya cried and cried, protecting her head with her bound hands but knowing it was not enough, nothing was going to be, she was going to die at the hands of this maniac. Until she slid mercifully into the oblivion of a dead faint.
And still Hannah Jones kept on hitting her sister.
Forty-Six
When Ziya woke up again, she found herself drawn like a prisoner of war. Arms tied on either side of the wall, legs bound together so she had no balance.
Her arms ached and hurt, but that was nothing compared to what was going on in her lower body. The knife wound throbbed like a living thing; snarling and biting with every breath that she took. And the rest of her body, her knees and ankles couldn’t hold her upright anymore now that she had come to consciousness.
She had no idea, what time it was, whether it was today or tomorrow or years had passed.
She slumped down to her knees, the arms stretching more than ever, because The Woodpecker, Hannah, had tied her up too tightly for there to be room for much movement.
Blood and sweat and tears mingled and fell down from her nose and chin and Ziya wondered how on earth she could ever survive another minute of this.
But, she only had to survive till tomorrow.
Tomorrow, The Woodpecker, Hannah, would go for the big bomb auction and Krivi would take her out then. He would take out the whole council of baddies in order to find her.
Krivi.
Ziya’s breath hitched on a sob.
How wrong he had been.
It wasn’t a man at all, they were after.
But a woman.
Hannah Jones. Sociopath. Terrorist. Bomber. Female.
But with her towering height, fit, almost androgynous body and close-cropped hair, she didn’t look like anyone’s idea of a woman. She even talked with a slightly huskier, deeper baritone than any other woman Ziya had heard speak.
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