Play Nice

by Gemma Halliday

  She talked rapidly into the phone for a minute, then stabbed it off before reentering the warehouse the same way she’d come out.

  Dade reached across Anna’s lap and opened the glove box, quickly pulling out a box of ammo. As he loaded bullets into the magazine, Anna felt the weight of the one shot left in her own Glock. She hoped it would be enough.

  “You have a plan?” Anna asked.

  Dade shook his head. “Not necessarily. But whoever is bankrolling Shelli also hired those guys to come after us last night.”

  “And you think he’s in there?”

  Dade shrugged. “I don’t know. But I want to be prepared either way.”

  Dade locked the magazine into place and stuck the barrel of the gun into his waistband, before jumping from the vehicle. Anna followed his lead, a step behind him as he casually walked the few yards between the SUV and the chain-link fence surrounding the property. Dade glanced over both shoulders before quickly scaling the fence, dropping easily on the other side. Anna followed, hitting the ground a few seconds later.

  Dade didn’t speak, but pointed her toward the right side of the building, while he disappeared around the left side, his 9mm held tight to his body, a deceptively relaxed grace moving his limbs as he circled around to the back of the warehouse.

  Anna tried to match his stride, but relaxed wasn’t in her repertoire at the moment. Nervous, anxious, unprepared for whatever lay ahead. She looked down. God, her hands were even shaking. She shifted her weapon to her left hand, shaking the right vigorously, trying to gain some control over herself again. She’d had control once. But that was way too long ago now for her body to recall on its own.

  Anna moved quickly, rounding the right side of the building. Windows lined the upper story of the warehouse, likely giving way to offices of some sort. Halfway down the length of the building Anna spied a door with another small window at the top. Silently, she jogged toward it, and stood on tiptoe to see inside.

  The interior of the warehouse was stacked with cardboard boxes. It was hard to tell the contents from here, but from the varying sizes and shapes and Asian lettering printed on the sides, she guessed it to be some sort of importing business. Though whether it was legal or not, she couldn’t say.

  No people were visible from her vantage point; though, as suspected, she spied offices built onto a second-story catwalk running the perimeter of the building’s interior.

  And in one of the offices, the light was on.

  She stepped back from the door. It was small, painted white like the rest of the building, with orange rusted hinges. It looked doubtful it would even open, but she put her hand on the knob, turning clockwise. Surprisingly, it moved. The hinges groaned as Anna pushed, the sound echoing through the warehouse. She cringed, hoping whoever was in the office couldn’t hear from up there.

  As soon as she had the door open enough to slip inside, she did, quickly closing it behind herself again. She took a minute to let her eyes adjust to the darkness inside, a sharp contrast from the bright sunlight magnified by fog outside. She listened for any signs of life on the main warehouse floor, but the only thing she heard was her own breath, coming hard in the silence. Once she trusted her eyesight again, she navigated the maze of boxes toward the far side of the warehouse where she’d seen the lights on.

  Her steps were light, though every one seemed to echo off the concrete floor. Or maybe just through her own head, filled with hot breath and nerves. She felt sweat trickle down her back despite the cool temperature as she neared a pair of metal stairs leading up to the catwalk.

  Anna took one tentative step, then another, bending low at the knees to distribute her weight evenly enough with each step so as not to cause the stairs to creak as she ascended. As she reached the top sweat fairly dripped down her back, dust tickling her nose, but she continued silently, slipping past two dark offices before nearing the one with a light emanating from the window.

  Thin curtains covered the glass, but as Anna crouched below the sill, she could make out two figures inside the room.

  The first was easy to identify, with her long chestnut wig. Shelli. She had her back to the window, talking to another person across the room. The other person was closer to the shadows, angled away from the window. Anna leaned forward, craning her neck to get a look at his face. It was a man, she could tell that much from his shape. He was dressed in slacks, a dress shirt, nothing unique or distinguishable that she could tell.

  Shelli was speaking to him, her hands moving animatedly as she did. The windows were too thick and the walls too well soundproofed for Anna to hear what she was saying, but the man answered calmly, causing Shelli to gesture even more wildly. At least that part of Shelli’s personality hadn’t been affected.

  Anna wondered suddenly how much was. She wasn’t used to being on this end of a professional. Most of the targets she had contact with had been exactly as they appeared to be. She had been the chameleon, the one who was not what she pretended to be to get close enough to them to strike. She preferred that position to the one she was in now, not knowing who was who or what she could trust to be real about them, if anything.

  Shelli moved toward the door, and Anna tensed. Shelli’s companion moved backward toward the corner of a desk that Anna could barely see behind the curtains. He put a large brimmed hat on his head, obscuring any chance Anna might have had at ascertaining his identity. The two moved toward the door, and Anna quickly ducked down, diving to the right to hide behind the corner of the next office.

  She watched as Shelli and the man exited the office, the man turning left, toward the stairs, and Shelli heading right, directly toward Anna’s position.

  Anna crouched lower, then froze in the dark corner, willing Shelli to walk past her. She held her breath, trying to keep her raw emotions from ringing out as the woman walked by.

  Shelli walked along the catwalk, passing within a foot of Anna’s hiding place. Anna watched her, eyes glued to Shelli’s back as she silently counted off seconds.

  One, two, three …

  Shelli didn’t turn around, and Anna let out a slow, evenly modulated breath as she watched Shelli follow the catwalk to the far left side of the building, exiting out into the sunshine through a second-story door to the outside.

  Anna waited only long enough to see the door swing shut before springing up and running after her. Shelli was a pawn in all this, Anna knew. Anna wanted the person that was orchestrating her movements, the one that had put the target on Anna’s head for whatever unknown threat she posed to him. But she also knew the quickest route to that person was Shelli.

  Anna jogged down the catwalk, quickly hitting the outside door. She pushed it open, eyes squinting against the sudden onslaught of light as she scanned the grounds for Shelli. She spotted her quickly, staying close to the side of the building as she made her way across the dirt property, toward a gate in the chain-link fence. She walked purposefully, completely unaware of being watched. Anna followed, keeping to the shelter of the building, the abandoned forklift, the shadow of a lone tree hunkering in the corner of the property to avoid being out in the open should Shelli turn around.

  But she didn’t.

  She made her way to the street, following it east to the corner, then turning left. Anna held her gun to her side, trying to make it as inconspicuous as possible to passing motorists as she followed Shelli, turning onto a street filled with single-story machine shops and mechanics’ garages.

  Shelli was half a block ahead when she paused at a small brick building and slipped into an alleyway between the structures. Anna jogged toward the alley, pausing to peek around the corner before following. She made it as far as the back of the building before Shelli jumped out from behind the brick, a gun pointed straight out in front of her.

  Anna froze, watching as Shelli’s upturned nose wrinkled in disgust, her eyes hard, cold, and flat.

  “Anya,” she said.

  It was one word, but it told Anna all she needed to know
. Shelli knew who she was. There was no doubt she had been hired to spy on Anna. And that she was working for someone from Anna’s past.

  Anna’s fingers tightened around her Glock.

  Shelli must have noticed, since she yelled, “Drop it!”

  Anna did, hearing it clatter to the pavement beside her. “So, it’s true,” she said. “It was all a lie.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Shelli countered. “Anya.”

  “I left that life a long time ago.”

  Shelli smiled. “You should know better than anyone that you can never leave that life.”

  Anna swallowed, a sudden lump in her throat reminding her just how true that statement was.

  “Who?” Anna asked. “Who are you working for?”

  Shelli opened her mouth.

  But Anna never heard the answer.

  Instead, pain exploded behind her ear, her vision blurring, blackness closing in on all sides as the ground tilted up to meet her.

  * * *

  Anna blinked her eyes. Or tried to. Pain shot through her head with the effort of moving, every breath in her chest pounding against her skull. She lay perfectly still, trying to get her bearings. The floor beneath her was cold, concrete if she had to guess. She could smell the Bay nearby, and hoped that meant she hadn’t been moved far. Voices came from very far away, speaking in a foreign language, though they sounded garbled, as if her reception needed tweaking. She took deep, slow breaths, trying to fill her brain with enough oxygen to gather her wits without letting the nausea in her stomach take over. She slowly wiggled her fingers and toes. Nothing felt broken or beyond repair, though she quickly ascertained that her wrists had been bound behind her back with something thin and plastic that bit into her skin. Slowly she cracked one eye open, ignoring the pounding behind her eyelids. Through slits of light she could see boxes, dust, a dirty floor. The warehouse. Shelli had brought her back here.

  Shelli and her partner, she realized. The man. He must have followed Anna as Anna had followed Shelli. Shelli’s partner? Employer? Anna blinked, opening the other eye, her gaze scanning the warehouse. She was laying on her side on the floor, dumped beside a tower of boxes. The voices were coming from a few feet away, she realized, the forms of Shelli and her companion taking shape. Shelli was again waving her arms, shouting. The companion was quiet, calm, his voice a low hum as he responded. It took Anna a minute to realize what was wrong with their garbled speech, but when she did it hit her with shocking clarity. They were speaking Serbo-Croatian. Or at least a variant of it, throwing in Slovenian and Albanian words to make their own bastardized version of the language. Anna was familiar with all three, a long-dead portion of her brain clicking on to translate the conversation. She was slow. Rusty. It was her native language, but she hadn’t used it for years. And coupled with the fog still slowly lifting from her head, she missed half of what they were saying. But Shelli was clearly angry. She hadn’t expected Anna to come here. The other man? He had. He’d been ready for her. “Waiting” was the literal translation of the word he used. She wondered if she had somehow telegraphed her movements that clearly or if he was just experienced enough that he always expected the unexpected.

  As Anna strained to hear more, she realized they had stopped talking, were facing her. They’d noticed she was awake.

  The man mumbled something to Shelli, and she turned around, her green eyes flashing at Anna as if somehow all her troubles were Anna’s fault.

  Who knows, maybe they were.

  “She’s awake,” the man said in English. “We should have a little chat with her.”

  Shelli stepped toward Anna, but the man put a hand on her arm to stop her. “No. Let me.”

  Shelli looked disappointed, something flashing behind her eyes again. She shot a look of disdain at Anna, narrowing her eyes.

  But she stepped aside, allowing her companion direct access to Anna. He stepped close, the tip of his black, leather shoes coming to the tip of Anna’s nose before he crouched down and tilted his head to the side to match her angle.

  “Hello, Anya,” he said, his accent thick, his voice hauntingly familiar, as if years and lifetimes had not hung in the air between them.

  Anne swallowed. Her eyes adjusting to the unreal sight of the person before her.

  “Hello, Petrovich,” she answered.

  Her former trainer. Goren Petrovich.

  The most dangerous man she had ever met.

  CHAPTER 15

  Anna blinked, staring at the ghost. That was the best word she could think of to describe him. Goren Petrovich was supposed to be long dead, killed years ago, half a world away.

  After Anya’s last hit, she’d spent a month in Switzerland, recovering from the burns she’d received after setting the car bomb. She’d had an escape planned well before she’d killed Fedorov that night, but even following her best laid plans, she knew she wouldn’t be getting away unscathed. It hadn’t mattered. A few burns, a sprained ankle, and a bullet lodged in her shoulder had all been a small price to pay for the hope of a new life. To be honest, she’d been prepared to pay higher.

  Once she’d left the private hospital, she’d traveled Europe as a “student,” staying a week in a hostel here, a couple weeks camping there, always on the move, always alert to being followed. Always conscious of the KOS’s shadow looming just behind her.

  She’d known when she left that the government who’d sponsored her actions was on the brink of collapse. If her line of work had taught her anything, it was when to get out. Factions began to break off, unity crumbling, a central KOS disintegrating from the inside out. Several people she’d known to be agents had been captured as prisoners of war. Some “disappeared” at the hands of their captors, some were traded as currency between warring factions. Others were tried for crimes against humanity and executed. Odd to think of it when they had believed their actions were executing those whose crimes had been inhumane.

  Or maybe that had just been a line they told their young recruits to help them sleep at night.

  After six months of constant travel and constant looking over her shoulder, Anna had read about the body of a business owner from Belgrade being found. He’d been shot dead in his store, a local bakery, seemingly a robbery attempt.

  Seemingly.

  But Anna knew better. She’d recognized the store as a front, the owner as Petrovich. She cried for a full a day, expelling a host of conflicting emotions. He’d trained her to kill, sent her to what could have been her death several times, had been the monster at her back the last six months, spurring her to move forward, never stop running because he could have been a step behind her. He’d also been the only father she’d ever known. Protected her, trained her to survive in a world where few did. His death had left a confusing taste of love and hatred in her mouth and had also served as the final severed tie between Anya Danielovich and Anna Smith. Anna had left for the United States after that.

  Only, it appeared, so had he. Because here he was. Standing over her. Very much alive.

  “Untie me,” Anna demanded, her voice holding much more bravado than she felt.

  Petrovich smiled, shook his head slowly from side to side. “I’m sorry, Anya. That wouldn’t be prudent.”

  She looked from Shelli to Petrovich. “What do you want?”

  He crouched down low, making himself comfortable at her level. “You.”

  An answer that inspired all sorts of paranoia to gather in her stomach. But she stuck her chin out defiantly. “You have me. Now what?”

  “Now, now. Fifteen years and this is the greeting I get?”

  Considering he’d been the one to knock her out and bind her, she didn’t think he was in the position to lecture on manners. However, she let the comment slide. Mostly because she was too well bound to do otherwise.

  “Let’s go into the office where we can talk,” he said. Though clearly it was not a suggestion.

  He nodded at Shelli, who hauled Anna up by her armpits, her strength surpris
ing for someone so petite. Anna looked into her former friend’s face, trying to gauge her. But Shelli didn’t look at her. Wouldn’t turn her face toward Anna at all. She was stone.

  Anna glanced at Petrovich. Had he trained Shelli, too? Was this who she worked for? Who had been stalking her like prey?

  Petrovich led the way back up the metal staircase and down the catwalk to the open office again. A metal desk and nondescript fabric-covered chairs filled the room, along with a couple tall filing cabinets that looked like they’d been collecting dust for some time. On the desk sat Anna’s Glock.

  One bullet.

  If she could just get to it, she would make the most of that one shot.

  Petrovich gestured to one of the chairs and Shelli deposited Anna into it.

  She couldn’t say that the vertical position was any more comfortable than lying on the floor, but at least it put her eye to eye with Petrovich as he sank into a chair opposite her.

  He smiled at her, a fatherly gesture that was completely at odds with their current situation.

  “How have you been, Anya?” he asked, his voice low and soothing.

  She shook off the tingle of familiarity, tried to ignore the inappropriate sense of nostalgia that accompanied his voice. How many nights had she arrived back at her training camp, getting away from a job with barely her life intact, to hear the comforting murmur of that same voice telling her she’d executed a job well?

  “I’ve been better,” Anna answered truthfully.

  Petrovich smiled. “You always did have a sense of humor.”

  “You are supposed to be dead,” she said. Not that she really wanted to walk down memory lane with the man, but considering her current position, she knew the more she could get him talking, the better.