Once Burned, Twice Spy

by Diane Henders

His hand closed over mine and he guided me down the stairs while I pretended with all my might that I was somewhere else. Walking down my own basement stairs, retreating to the safety of my secret room…

  The clang of the final door behind us was accompanied by the movement of cool air across my face. I opened my eyes again and tried to reassure myself.

  Lots of space down here. Constant circulation of fresh air. Nice big white corridors and lots of glass in the labs.

  And beyond them, high-security prison cells that had never seen the light of day…

  My breath hitched and I stumbled.

  “Okay, darlin’?” Hellhound’s arm came around me, warm with affection I didn’t deserve.

  “Yeah,” I lied faintly. “My legs are just a bit shaky.”

  “This way.” The guards ushered us down the corridor toward the conference room. When the door swung open my trembling knees nearly dropped me to the floor.

  Far too many uniforms with far too much gold braid. Good God, the whole chain of command was here. Dermott and Stemp and Holt, too.

  Fuck, I couldn’t do this…

  Stop panicking. Focus.

  I drew an unsteady breath and tried to let it out slowly as we moved into the room. Among the impassive faces around the conference table, I spotted a few friendly ones. Skidmark offered me an ironic salute and Spider gave me a feeble smile, his face drawn with worry.

  Farther down the table, Jack’s ivory complexion was paler than usual and her beautiful blue eyes had dark smudges under them. Oh, God, I’d forgotten that I’d dragged her into this. And Reggie, too; although he wasn’t here at the moment. Had I destroyed their lives as well?

  My guilty gaze flitted away from Jack to the other end of the table.

  I stopped short.

  Hellhound walked into me and I stumbled forward a couple of paces, my jaw dropping.

  “Ian?” My voice pitched into an incredulous squawk.

  He winced and whispered, “Not so loud, please. Terrible headache.”

  “I thought you were dead!” My volume made him wince again, and I lowered my voice and added, “Sorry. But what happened? The way you hit the ground I was sure you were dead…”

  “I almost wish I had been,” he murmured, cradling his temples. “I was wearing a bulletproof vest. The bullet threw me back and I cracked my nut on the car. Knocked me out and came damned close to scalping me.” He rotated his chair cautiously to exhibit a large shaved patch on the back of his head decorated with dozens of stitches.

  “Well, that explains all the blood…” Hope rose in my chest, only to subside immediately. “But you were unconscious. So you didn’t see what happened with Grandin and Dirk.”

  “Out cold, I’m afraid,” Ian agreed ruefully.

  Dark suspicion whispered in my ear. Ian had said Grandin owed him. And Grandin had double-tapped Dirk, but not Ian.

  My heart froze. Ian and Grandin were working together to frame me.

  Omigod.

  I was completely fucked.

  “Enough jawing,” Dermott snapped. “Sit.”

  I stumbled to the nearest chair and fell into it. Kane and Hellhound took seats on either side of me, and the two guards stepped away to form an ominous backdrop against the wall.

  “Travers, hook her up,” Dermott said. As Jack stood and made her way around the table, lie detector case in hand, Dermott added, “Everybody else gave their statements while you were in the hospital, so this is just a formality.”

  My heart plummeted.

  It was over before it started. With Ian and Grandin both testifying against me, I didn’t have a chance.

  Jack’s icy fingers trembled against my forehead while she fastened the headdress of electrodes.

  When I was hooked up, Dermott waved an impatient hand. “Holt, go ahead.”

  Holt rose and stalked toward me, his steely gaze pinning me mercilessly to my chair. “Is your name Aydan Kelly?” he snapped.

  “Y-Yes.”

  Green light. I took small comfort from that, at least.

  “Tell us what happened,” he said.

  I froze. That wasn’t a yes or no question. Had they modified the lie detector?

  “Come on, Kelly,” Holt prompted. Or maybe he was taunting me.

  “I, um…” My voice came out in a feeble croak and I cleared my throat. “Where do you want me to start?”

  “Start when you left the secured facility in Calgary with Stemp.”

  I darted a glance at Stemp’s expressionless face. Oh, God, was I going to ruin him, too?

  “We, um… we left. Stemp gave me…” I scanned the room. Not enough security clearances here. “Some, um… classified items… and told me that the chain of command had told him to give them to me. He said my orders were to drop off-grid and investigate Nora Taylor. Then we went to the airport to meet his parents for supper. I gave his mom my cell phone to take back to my place, and we went our separate ways.”

  The lie detector didn’t blink and Holt didn’t interrupt with any questions, so I went on with my story, leaving nothing out. When I got to the part about meeting Nora and Ian in his room I dared a frown at Ian. “Why did you shoot me?”

  He gave me a sheepish smile. “Sorry, Storm.”

  A flicker of alarm must have shown on my face at his use of the nickname. He added, “Don’t worry, I’m not giving away secrets. Your chain of command has always known about my involvement at the commune, and now they know about Skidmark and Moonbeam and Karma, too.” I eyed Stemp, trying to gauge his reaction, but he remained impassive while Ian went on, “And as per our agreement, your names…” He included Skidmark with a flick of his gaze. “…will be redacted from my reports to my superiors.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “So why did you shoot me?”

  He gave one of his debonair shrugs, followed by a wince as the movement jarred his head. “I wanted the phone number that Nora had given you.”

  “So you shot me?” I couldn’t keep the outrage out of my voice.

  “You were going to do the same to me so you could talk to Nora alone,” he said reasonably.

  I deflated. “Right. Sorry.”

  “Get on with it,” Dermott snapped.

  Nobody interrupted while I described Nora’s revelations about our relationship and Sam’s mental programming; my discovery of the metal powder in my pocket; and my conscription of Skidmark, Kane, and Hellhound. Keeping the varying security clearances of my audience in mind, I filtered out the classified information while still telling the whole story as best I could.

  “…And then I woke up in the hospital,” I finished at last, and slumped with exhaustion.

  Holt stood staring down at me, arms crossed over his chest and jaw jutting. This was the part where he pronounced my guilt without even cross-examining me…

  A small defiant part of my mind reared up and pushed a question out of my mouth. “Ian, what did you mean when you told Grandin he owed you? Were you working together to frame me?”

  Holt snorted. “No, he was working with me to sting Grandin. Supposedly.” He shot a glare at Ian.

  Ian remained unperturbed. “I was working with you,” he told Holt calmly. “But I had my own interests to protect, too. I had promised Skidmark that I wouldn’t reveal his identity so I couldn’t tell you about him; and I wanted a private conversation with Storm. But I made sure I activated the audio and video feed when it mattered, didn’t I?”

  “Huh,” Holt said, clearly irritated at being left out of the loop. “It was just damn lucky you did.”

  My stomach lurched. Audio and video feed? Oh God, had Holt been watching while I was making out with Ian?

  “Wait,” I said, my face flaming. “What audio and video feed?”

  “The one that recorded Grandin shooting Dirk and me, and trying to frame you,” Ian said cheerfully.

  Chapter 48

  “What?” The word leaped from my mouth with all the force of my suddenly-surging hope behind it. “You recorded that?”


  Ian smiled. “Of course. I activated the recorder as soon as I saw Grandin and Dirk coming over.”

  “I saw you reach up to your throat when you stepped away from me. I thought you were zipping up your parka because it was so damn cold out.”

  Ian’s smile widened. “So did they.”

  “But… But…”

  Words failed me. “Explain,” I demanded.

  “Not so fast,” Holt snapped. “You’re the one answering questions here.”

  “Right,” I said faintly. “Sorry.”

  My heart rattled in my throat. Did this mean they believed me? Or were they only offering me a flash of false hope before the axe fell?

  “Was that a complete account of everything you’ve done since you left the secured facility on Thursday?” Holt asked.

  “Yes,” I said absently, my mind still reeling over the ramifications of Ian’s recording.

  The green light blinked on the lie detector and I caught my breath. Shit, that had been a real question.

  But I had passed.

  Easing out a careful breath, I sat up straight and focused all my attention on Holt.

  “Was everything you told us true?” he asked.

  “Y-Yes…”

  The instant between my answer and the flash of the green light seemed like an eternity.

  Passed again. I dared one more breath.

  “Are you aware of any crime you have committed that might be the result of outside programming embedded in your mind?”

  I struggled to unravel the question. Dammit, my brain still wasn’t up to normal speed. Was he asking if I’d knowingly committed any crimes? What would that really mean? As an agent I sometimes did things that would be considered a crime if a civilian had done them…

  I gave up. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to answer that question. Could you simplify it?”

  Holt glowered at me. “To your knowledge, have you done anything that would compromise national security?”

  Guilt swamped me. I had revealed classified technology to Skidmark. And I’d told Kane, a civilian, about the U.S.’s top-secret weapons presentation.

  But did that count as compromising national security? Skidmark was an agent, and Kane was an ex-agent…

  “I… don’t know,” I stammered.

  Holt hissed out an irritable breath. “That’s why I said ‘to your knowledge’. It’s not a hard question, Kelly! Yes or no?”

  “Well, I told Skidmark and Kane…” I began.

  “Never mind that,” Holt interrupted. He scowled at me and put sarcastic emphasis on his words. “To your knowledge, have you told anybody except our trusted allies… anything that might compromise national security or violate your oath as an agent?”

  Asshole.

  “No,” I snapped.

  The green light flashed, and Holt fired the next question at me. “To your knowledge, and assuming you can trust our allies, have you done anything that might compromise national security or violate your oath as an agent?”

  “No.”

  Green light.

  “At any time, did you intend to do anything that might compromise national security or violate your oath as an agent?”

  “No.”

  The green light flashed again and Holt shrugged and turned to the roomful of people. “Those are the only questions I have. Her conscious actions and intentions are innocent; and if she’s been programmed there’s no point in asking her about it. We’ll have to question Nora Taylor for that. Anybody else have questions for Kelly?”

  Nobody spoke, and Holt jerked his chin at Jack. “Okay, you can unhook her.” As Jack moved to obey, he added, “Kelly, any questions for us?”

  I stared at him. So many questions. “What… what the hell happened?”

  Holt smirked. “After you passed the lie detector test at the secured facility we knew Grandin was trying to frame you but we couldn’t prove it, and with his diplomatic immunity as an agent-”

  The door crashed open and everyone jerked, whipping around to face the threat with weapons at the ready.

  Reggie bounded into the room, apparently oblivious to the small arsenal pointed at him. “We nailed them!” he shouted. “Nailed the fucking bastards! We know how they did it!”

  “Thanks for knocking,” Holt snapped, holstering his pistol. Everyone else stood down, too.

  Reggie blinked as though barely registering the fact that he’d nearly taken a volley of bullets approximately equal to his body weight. “Whatever,” he said with an impatient wave of his hand. “I’m telling you, we solved it!”

  “Well, don’t wait to enlighten us,” Holt said sarcastically.

  Reggie launched into his explanation as though Holt hadn’t spoken. “It was a setup right from the start. Mitchell and Pino faked the whole thing, and they admitted everything when I confronted them with it on the phone a few minutes ago. The rebar was fake. It was plastic microbeads cast in a loose matrix of organic resin so it looked like steel rebar from a distance. The glass vial held a miniscule amount of fuming nitric acid. When the vial broke, the released vapour was concentrated enough to destroy the organic bonds within the small containment vessel, but it dispersed harmlessly into the air and got sucked out by the ventilation fans when the vessel was opened.”

  He hesitated. “Well, it was mostly harmless. Mitchell and Pino had some respiratory and mucous membrane irritation, but they passed it off as a reaction to the smoke.”

  “What did…?” I began, but Reggie was already hurrying on with his explanation.

  “So as soon as the smoke obscured everything, Pino opened the containment vessel, blew the plastic microbeads onto the floor where they’d look like ordinary dirt, and threw a pinch of metal powder into the bottom of the containment vessel to make it look as though metal powder had been stolen.” Reggie cast a triumphant look around the table. “And get this: We found traces of metal powder in the storage bag where Grandin had stored his so-called diplomatic archival material.”

  “So that’s how he did it!” I exclaimed. “The bastard had the bag of metal powder on him right from the start. He put it in the archival storage bag to avoid the metal detector search, and then while I was unconscious he planted it in my parka pocket.”

  “You have the metal powder?” Reggie demanded.

  “Yes… well, no; not exactly. It’s inside a toilet tank in a restaurant on Macleod Trail.”

  “Excellent.” Reggie grinned, the good side of his mouth turning up despite the immobility of his prosthetic face mask. “We’ll be able to match its chemical composition and nail Grandin for sure. And when I told Pino that Grandin had been arrested, he broke down and told the whole story. Mitchell was in on faking the demo, but he thought the order had come down from his higher-ups to feed us disinformation instead of revealing actual classified technology. He didn’t know about the rest of the plot.”

  He shot me an ‘I-told-you-so’ look. “Remember I said Pino had been caught stealing research?”

  When I nodded, Reggie went on, “Grandin knew about that, so he leaned on Pino. Threatened to have his security clearance pulled, create another big shitstorm unless Pino cooperated with him. So Grandin gashed Pino’s leg that morning and put the dirty bandage on it; and as soon the room filled with smoke, Grandin handed Pino the plastic blowgun he’d used to shoot the ketamine dart. Pino hid it under his bandage, and then flushed it down the toilet as soon as he had the chance.”

  “Nice sleuthing,” Holt drawled. “Not really relevant since we already knew Kelly didn’t have anything to do with the theft of the metal powder; but at least it kept you out of trouble. More or less.”

  “Bite me,” Reggie retorted. “There never was a theft; and Mitchell and Pino were dicking with all of us, not just Kelly. Five Eyes needs to know that.” He turned and marched out.

  “Where was I?” Holt asked, as though Reggie’s brilliant deductions had been nothing more than an irksome appropriation of his spotlight.

  “You wer
e telling me what happened after I went off-grid,” I reminded him.

  “I knew your orders were to investigate Nora Taylor,” Holt said. “So all I had to do was wait for you to contact her.” He scowled at Ian. “And MI6 here was supposed to cooperate.”

  “And I did,” Ian said mildly. “I played up to Grandin and pretended I wanted to capture Storm as badly as he did. I built a rapport with him while you investigated behind the scenes; and I made sure you were in place to capture him when he made his move.”

  I eyed Holt. “So you were right around the corner the whole time?”

  Holt gave me a self-satisfied smirk. “Of course. With a full tactical team; and a helicopter on alert; and the Calgary police were diverting traffic from blocks away.” His tone turned patronizing. “You should have noticed there was no traffic.”

  Shit, and I’d been thinking we were alone because of the bad weather.

  I didn’t admit that.

  “I’m glad you recorded the whole thing,” I said to Ian instead. “I called in with a secured phone but nobody answered. If not for you…” My throat went dry at the thought and I didn’t finish the sentence.

  “When did you call?” Holt demanded.

  “When Grandin shot Dirk.”

  All eyes turned to Dermott, who flushed. “I didn’t get any call.”

  “I called,” I repeated. “It rang at least three times.”

  Stemp turned an icy gaze on Dermott and spoke for the first time. “Three times?”

  Dermott went redder. “So what? It didn’t change anything. I don’t see why the Director should answer secured phones anyway. That’s an analyst’s job.”

  “I answer secured phones because my agents’ safety is my top priority,” Stemp said in a voice that could have frozen nitrogen. “If you choose not to do so, then it is your duty to hand off the task to an analyst who will make it their top priority.”

  “You can’t talk to me like that,” Dermott blustered. “I’m the Director of Operations and-”

  A throat-clearing interrupted him as General Briggs rose, exuding his usual air of effortless authority. “Thank you for your service, Dermott,” he said. “But Stemp’s suspension was only a concession to Five Eyes in the first place. Now that Agent Kelly has completed her lie detector test, the chain of command agrees…” He swept the rest of the gold-braided crowd with a gaze that challenged anyone to argue. They all nodded, and Briggs went on, “Director Stemp has been cleared of any wrongdoing and is reinstated, effective immediately.”