by Gayle Wilson
“Then maybe his death wasn’t related, and Hardesty used it as cover to bump off Reynolds. Two-for-one day.”
“Or we’re being picked off one by one by some revengeminded Colombian. Somehow I can’t see Paul doing those things to Jeff.”
“He’s cold-blooded enough to mutilate the body after he killed him. If he thought we’d buy it. No one saw the coroner’s report but Hardesty.”
He studied her face for a moment before he continued, “So what do we do?”
“We’re careful. We take precautions. We’re aware. And we wait. If we’re right…” She didn’t finish the thought because if Kyle was correct about Hardesty taking his own revenge on Jeff for betraying the operation, there should be no more deaths. Another death would almost certainly mean the cartel.
When Kyle brought her home, she invited him in for a drink. It wasn’t late because they both had to work the next day. She expected his usual flattery and at least a play for more than a good-night kiss, but she was pleased to be wrong. He treated her like a colleague and after a few minutes, he got up to leave. She walked him to the door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said. When he gently looped her hair behind her ears, she smiled at the gesture. It was something she did at work to keep it out of her eyes, and she knew now that he had watched her and was unconsciously copying her habit.
He lowered his mouth to hers, and his kiss was more pleasant than she had anticipated. His lips were firm, and he knew exactly what he was doing. She wondered why she had always considered him nothing more than the office flirt. He was handsome and well-built, on halfback lines, slightly thick for her tastes. Physically, not mentally thick, she amended. She enjoyed the kiss, but when his hand touched her breast through the cotton dress, she knew she didn’t want that intimacy. It didn’t feel right. She broke the contact, moving away from his body.
He raised his head and studied her face with blue eyes that suddenly reminded her of Paul’s. Clear and honest.
“Sleep well,” he said, and turned back to her as he opened the door. “Lock up. Every lock you’ve got. Do you understand?”
“I will. Don’t worry. I enjoyed tonight,” she offered the back of his head.
He didn’t turn around again, but he said before closing the door behind him, “Yeah. Me, too. Maybe too much.”
She looked at the door for a long time after Kyle left. Then she secured all the locks and turned off the living-room lights and went to bed, but it was several hours before she slept.
TWO WEEKS went by before anything else unusual happened. Unless Kyle taking her to a couple of pleasant lunches was unusual. There were no more accidental bodily contacts at her desk. He behaved like a perfect gentleman, to use her mother’s term. He asked her out once, and she really had another commitment. He didn’t seem to resent the refusal, saying something about a rain check.
Then there was another disappearance—Drew Gates. No signs this time of forced entry. No blood. Just gone. Vanished off the face of the earth.
The strain was beginning to show on them all. She wondered how many of the task force changed their locations. She didn’t sleep at her apartment after she heard Gates was missing. She took a room at one of the motels near Dulles. She didn’t tell anyone, and it was not the only precaution she took. She didn’t stay at work past five anymore. She left with the crowd from the other offices. She walked off in a different direction each afternoon and changed taxis several times, usually moving through stores or crowded restaurants from the front entrance to the back and then out onto a different street, blending with the crowd. She even wore a hat or a scarf to hide her hair, obeying all the instructions she had thought so ridiculous when she heard them in training.
She followed every stricture religiously, but as the days slipped into weeks, everyone relaxed. Nothing else had happened, and by now she needed things from her apartment. She was tired of living out of a suitcase, tired of the same dresses, tired of the spy stuff. One evening, after her careful hopscotch routine through the stores and a quiet dinner at a small neighborhood café across town, she went back to her apartment. There was an empty suitcase in the top of her closet. She would fill it up and then again avoid the place like the plague.
THE PHONE SHRILLED harshly into the quiet dimness of the elegant room. The dark, long-fingered hand that reached to stop its invasive noise prevented a second ring.
He lifted the receiver, and Diego’s voice spoke into his patient stillness.
“She’s here.”
“Bring her,” he said calmly and replaced the phone in its cradle. He had waited a long time for the message he’d just received. He took a deep breath against the churning anticipation, fighting for his usual control against the emotions the call had evoked.
Business, he reminded himself with a certain cold bitterness. Only business. Even as he said it, he knew it for the lie it was.
His fingers lifted unconsciously, but when he realized what he was doing, he forced his hand to drop, to lie clenched in his lap. And then, again, he simply waited.
HER APARTMENT WAS comfortably familiar. Nothing out of place. Nothing that was not as it should be. She checked it out carefully, even carrying the gun she had never fired except at a target. There was no one in the rooms she’d decorated so lovingly when she’d moved to the city. Her plants looked past help, all but a mother-in-law’s tongue that appeared not to have noticed the several-weeks-long lack of water. She set it in the sink and filled the soil to overflowing twice, watching the water swirl down the drain.
She checked the refrigerator, but since she didn’t cook, there was nothing too disgusting in it. The oranges in the drawer were dried and hard, and she poured the soured milk down the drain. Everything seemed to have survived her absence. She wondered if she were being foolish. She hated the way the motel was eating into her savings, but, she thought with a certain irony, she would probably hate being dead even more.
She struggled to get the big suitcase off the shelf of the bedroom closet and found it was full of clothing she had intended to take to one of the shelters. She dumped it on the bed, then, disgusted with the way that looked, threw it onto the floor of the hall closet.
She systematically filled the suitcase with lingerie and the rest of her summer wardrobe. She tossed in a few pairs of shoes and the remainder of her makeup. That should get her through the next few weeks before anyone noticed that she had been wearing the same four or five dresses over and over. She even had some leisure clothes packed this time. She hadn’t thought about how long she might want to hide out the first time she’d done this.
She wished she could talk to someone at work, but she didn’t want to feel like a fool if they were all calmly going about their normal routines. And she still hesitated to reveal her new address, even to her colleagues. That instinctive distrust bothered her more than the fear of their ridicule, however.
She took a final look around, deciding to leave the plant in the sink. She put in the plug and filled it halfway with water. The clay pot would absorb enough to keep the plant alive. She put a couple of the others in, thinking that if there was any life left, they might revive. She cut out the lights and looked through the peephole of the front door. There was no activity in the hall, but she slipped her gun out and, slinging her purse strap over her left shoulder, picked up the suitcase with her left hand.
She stepped out into the hallway and looked up and down. Nothing. She checked the door, and the knob turned under her fingers.
“Damn,” she said under her breath. She decided it was quicker to put on the inside latch than to dig for her keys. She set down the suitcase and then her purse, whose strap had slid down her arm. She opened the door, reset the lock, closed the door and tried it again. The lock turned once more under her fingers. She was reaching back inside, puzzled by the antics of a lock that had, up to now, never given any trouble.
The hand gripping her elbow literally stopped her heart. She turned in automatic reaction, brin
ging the gun around, but she never completed that move. The fist that connected with her chin effectively put an end to whatever intention she’d had. Her head slammed back into the frame of the door, and the gun slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers. As she slid down the wall, she watched it bounce in slow motion against the gray commercial carpet. She felt her knees give way, and her eyelids dropped, but not before she had glimpsed the dark complexion of the man who stood before her.
Like an amateur, was the last bitter thought that flashed through her mind before she hit the floor, already deeply unconscious.
Chapter Three
She came to on the back seat of a car. A big, comfortable back seat. Unless you were suffering from a massive headache and nausea. Unless your hands were taped together at the wrists and your vision blocked by some kind of blindfold. She stayed awake long enough to make those disheartening discoveries, and then the blackness closed in again, stealing around the edges of her consciousness despite her best efforts.
SHE WASN’T DEAD. Your head didn’t hurt if you were dead. She must have been aware of the voices at some level for a while. Spanish, softly spoken, too quiet to allow her to make sense of the words, or perhaps her brain still wasn’t working. She didn’t think they spoke Spanish in heaven. Or in hell. She wondered briefly why she had always assumed they spoke English in the afterlife. Maybe it was like tongues in the New Testament; everybody heard whatever was said in his own language.
She must have faded out again after that last less-thancoherent line of thought. There were no voices now, but she definitely heard something that was familiar—the faintest trace of sound, tickling her consciousness like a song you knew you’d heard before, but couldn’t quite remember.
Rejecting the impossibility of trying to identify the noise, given the crescendo of pain in her head, she tried instead to get enough saliva together to swallow, to ease the dryness of her throat. The blindfold was still in place, but at least her hands were free.
“Ms. Phillips?” The slightly accented baritone spoke quite near her, to her left—from behind the back of the couch she was lying on, its upholstered rise against her left shoulder. The deep tones were far more polite than they should have been, given the situation. Far too pleasant.
“Look,” she said, fighting to control her own voice, to make it as calm as his had been. “I don’t know who you are or why you brought me here, but you’ve got the wrong person. You’ve made some kind of mistake.” Even talking hurt her head. The words beat against the back of her skull like a hammer. Think, she demanded against the pain’s distraction.
“Rachel Phillips,” he said, and it was not a question.
“I’m not Rachel Phillips. I told you—”
“Rachel now only to your family. To your mother. Rae to your friends.”
“I told you—” she began again.
“Please, don’t pretend you believe we are stupid enough to approach the wrong person. Diego had been waiting a long time for you to show up and finally his patience was rewarded. I assure you he made no mistake about your identity.”
“Diego?” she questioned. There was more than one, of course. The silken voice certainly didn’t match the image burned into her consciousness of the coarse face she had seen briefly in the dim hallway.
“Diego brought you here.”
“I don’t know any Diego. I don’t know Rachel Phillips. I don’t know why you would hit me and tie me up and—”
“I’d like to ask you some questions,” he interrupted again, softly reasoning against her manufactured anger.
There was nothing threatening in the quiet suggestion. Nothing to produce the creeping horror that began in her bowels and iced its way upward until it froze the breath in her lungs. She fought for control while the rumors about what had been done to Jeff Reynolds and the memory of the courier’s agonized whispers beat beside the pain in her head, joined with it and tried to overcome her control. She wondered how quickly she would give in. Everyone did. There were thresholds of suffering beyond which not even the strongest of will or body could hold out.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, suddenly panicked. Despite her effort at control, she could hear the child’s terror in the question. Nightmares. Monsters. She knew with chilling certainty that the monster under the bed this time was real—terrifyingly real—and there was nothing she could do about it.
“I’d simply like to ask you some questions. Despite Diego’s—” he began.
“Work for it,” she interrupted softly, bitterly, willing her defiance. She was so scared. She could feel the fear coiling in her guts.
“I beg your pardon?” he asked, the silken voice devastatingly polite.
If she didn’t get her act together, they would begin, and she knew she would tell them whatever they wanted. She would eventually, of course, but there was something at the core of who she was that made her determined to resist as long as she was able.
“I don’t know anything to tell you. So whatever you’re planning, I suggest you get the show on the road.”
“Whatever I’m planning?” he repeated, sounding genuinely puzzled. “I don’t think—” He stopped suddenly. “You believe I intend to hurt you.”
“Silly me,” she said scathingly. This time, when the beautiful voice came to her out of the darkness, she clearly identified the nuance of tone—amusement.
“Too many movies, Ms. Phillips. No one uses torture anymore. Drugs are so much more efficient. With the right drug, you’d tell me anything I wanted to know in five minutes.”
Either way, she admitted, he was right. Maybe quicker than five minutes if it was torture, but somehow she was infinitely relieved because she believed him. It was possible he was just playing with her, but there was something in the quiet amusement that she latched onto. She believed him. Despite her training. Despite her situation. Because you want to. Because you’re so damned afraid.
“I don’t know anything to tell you,” she said again. She thought she could hear the regret in her own avowal.
“Then I’ll tell you,“ he replied, still amused, patient with her puny defiance. “You have only to listen.”
The slightly awkward phrasing was not unpleasant. Like the faint accent, it added richness to the deep timbre. She wondered briefly what she found so reassuring about this Colombian bastard’s voice. So…appealing, for God’s sake.
She thought of what she knew about hostage psychology, about the Stockholm Syndrome. She wondered if she could already be trying to build bridges to her captor. She was at his mercy. Did she subconsciously want to please him so much, in order to protect herself, that she was giving him attributes that she knew he couldn’t possibly possess?
You have only to listen, he’d told her. Better than what she’d been anticipating. She had time to wonder briefly what he knew before he told her—in excruciating detail.
“Your people carried out a series of raids and arrests early last year aimed at the operation of the Medellin cartel. The information that was used to shut down the money-laundering operation here was supplied by a man who contacted your agency through diplomatic channels. Paul Hardesty, your immediate superior, set up a meeting to receive the information the source offered. Instead, the informant was betrayed by someone in your task force.”
The silence stretched out between them as she assimilated this. He had put into words the suspicion she had lived with so long, the suspicion she had voiced only to Kyle. Apparently that supposition had been correct, confirmed by someone who certainly was in a position to know.
“Do you remember the operation?” he asked finally.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were a member of the ‘cleanup crew.’ Damage control. You and Paul Hardesty and Franklin Holcomb flew to Virginia. Once there, you listened to the information this man had for your agency, and you personally typed what he told you into a computer.”
As he talked, she was again in that cold, da
rk room, with the glow of the screen and the voice of a dying man whispering out of the blackness. Dying to put an end to the same scum who was sitting here beside her now, safe and taunting. Probing. Seeking other victims.
“Do you remember that night, Ms. Phillips?”
I remember, Rae thought. I’ll never forget. But caught in her memories, she didn’t answer him.
So he asked again, “Ms. Phillips, do you remember that man?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“I’d like you to tell me his name.”
She couldn’t fit that into the script she’d been writing. Why the hell would he want the name of the source? He was dead. He’d been dead a long time, and this man must certainly know that.
“Ms. Phillips.”
“It’s your nickel,” she said, stalling, trying to buy time. It was a phrase her father had used. In late-night phone calls from snitches, informers, always trying to work a deal. Her father’s stock answer had been that they talk and then, based on the information, he would offer. Your nickel
“I beg your pardon?” The amusement was back, the idiom too old, probably, to make much sense to this man.
“It means…I mean that you want to talk, so talk. I told you. I don’t have anything to say. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“All I want is a name.”
“I don’t have it. I don’t know what you’re—”
“Please. This is becoming tiresome. You used the information this man supplied to shut down most of the Stateside operations of the Medellin cartel. With the assassination of Escobar by the Colombian authorities—”
“Assassination?” she gathered her courage to jeer. “Like a politician? Did you think that Escobar had been elected to run Colombia?”
“He ran the cartel—one of them—until his death.”
“And in Colombia, he who runs the cartel, runs the country?” she asked mockingly.
“Who runs Colombia now?” he asked softly.
