Devious Minds

by Colleen Helme

  I took a deep breath and stood up straight. “I can do this,” I said to him, but it was mostly to reassure myself. After a brief ride in the elevator, we turned down a hallway, past a nurse’s station, and found Gabriel talking to a police officer.

  “Ah... good. You are here,” Gabriel said, and ushered us toward a door. He hesitated and caught my gaze. “He is inside, but I want to prepare you. His face is badly bruised, but he can talk, although not very well. He is hooked up to many monitors, but he is actually doing better now than he was earlier when I called.” I caught a couple of his thoughts that weren’t in French, picking up that it was probably the prospect of seeing me that did it.

  I swallowed, then nodded that I understood, and he opened the door. Inside, Blake’s bed and all the equipment took up most of the space in the tiny room, and he lay on his back with the bed slightly propped up. There were tubes everywhere, and his hair poked up at all angles. One eye was swollen shut, and that side of his face was purple.

  At the side of his bed, I took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “I’m here, Blake.”

  His good eye fluttered open, and he turned his face toward me. The uninjured side of his mouth turned up in a smile. “You came,” he slurred. “Good. Sorry about this...” He was thinking how sorry he was to put me in so much danger, and he was more than grateful I’d escaped.

  “It’s okay. I’m fine. You just need to get better, all right?”

  “I need you to do something... for me.” He was thinking about the files at his apartment... in a special hiding place. If he died, they needed to be given to his superior at CIA headquarters. Some of the intel was old, but valuable contacts were in those files, and he didn’t want them lost or stolen, especially the one on Cypher. If I was going up against him, there were some important things I needed to know... that everyone needed to know.

  “Files,” he whispered. “Only for you... give them to Wells... in my...” he swallowed, unable to continue.

  “Your apartment,” I finished for him. “Your contacts... I know... where are they?”

  He thought of the hidden compartment in the floorboards under the dining room table and chairs. “Compartment... under the rug...”

  “I got it. Under the table and chairs in the kitchen.”

  His one-eyed gaze sharpened, and he stared at me. He was thinking, what the hell, and I smiled.

  “Blake, if you really want to know what the hell is going on, you’re just going to have to pull through. Got it? You can’t die.” He was thinking, bossy, but he liked it just the same.

  “There’s something you need to know,” I continued. “Cypher was there. He was part of the group, but not the leader, just one of the guys. None of them know who he really is. But I figured it out. I’m going to help Gabriel stop him. Is that what you want?”

  His gaze turned to Gabriel and Ramos, who stood at a respectful distance beside the door. He wondered what the hell Ramos was doing there. He trusted Gabriel, but wasn’t so sure about everyone he worked with. Still, his gaze came back to me, and he gave a slight nod before closing his eyes.

  “You have to get better, Blake. You hear me?” His eyes were closed, and he didn’t respond, but in his mind, I heard him say that he’d do his best. “Good. That’s all I ask. Don’t give up.” I heard an okay in his mind, and I squeezed his hand. He squeezed my hand back while thinking about how I needed to be careful, and he was disappointed that I was having all the fun and, what the hell? How did I know where it was? Then he drifted off to sleep.

  I let out a deep breath and stepped away. Hopefully, he wouldn’t remember much of this one-sided conversation once he woke up for real. I just hoped he did wake up. I hated seeing him like this, and hot anger swelled inside me at Cypher and his crew. Cypher needed to be found and stopped before he hurt anyone else.

  I left Blake’s side and hurried out the door, stepping into the hall with Ramos and Gabriel following behind. Letting out a sigh, my shoulders sagged with sadness. I had a feeling he’d pull through, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

  “Did you understand him?” Gabriel asked.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  Gabriel nodded, but he frowned, and I could tell that he didn’t exactly believe me. “That is good.” He glanced between me and Ramos. “I hope you can come to headquarters and look at some pictures of terrorists which we have assembled, to see if any of them look like the man you know as Cypher. Would that be possible?”

  “Sure, but I have to get my things first. I can meet with you in about an hour. Would that be all right?”

  “I... am concerned for your safety. Although I am sure he is busy to carry out his plans. I believe Cypher would want to kill you if he knew where you were. Yes?” He glanced at Ramos. “It is a risk. Can you guarantee her safety?” Ramos glanced at me, knowing Gabriel was right. He caught my pleading gaze and frowned.

  “There’s something I need to do for Blake,” I said. “So I’d like to go.”

  “Fine,” Ramos said, pinning me with his hard gaze. “But if anything seems suspicious, anything at all...”

  “I know. We won’t go in,” I agreed.

  “When you are done, come to my office at our headquarters,” Gabriel said. He wrote on a card and handed it to me. “Here is the address. The gate, it is guarded. They will have to let you in. I will tell them to expect you, but you might have to wait for a moment while you are approved.”

  “All right, thanks,” I said. “We’ll be there shortly. And... thanks for helping Blake.”

  “Of course, we will keep watch over him.”

  I nodded and followed Ramos out of the building. Once we were in the car, he turned to me with a serious glint in his eyes. “So what did Blake want you to do?”

  “He wanted me to retrieve some files from his apartment. I think one of them has information about Cypher, which he wanted me to have. They’re all for someone named Wells with the CIA. I think that’s his boss. Anyway, they’re in his apartment, in the floor under the rug.”

  “Right,” Ramos said. “Seems pretty ‘cloak and dagger’ of him, and makes me wonder if we should take them or not.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I agreed. “But he wanted me to get the files, so I think there must be a good reason.”

  “I suppose, as long as it doesn’t get you into more trouble.”

  “There is that.” I gave Ramos the address, and we drove through town. To take my mind off my troubles, I gazed out the window to enjoy what I could see of Paris and sighed, wishing I could just forget all of this and be a real tourist. But if there was a threat, I had to help stop it and hope everything turned out all right in the end. Then maybe I could relax and do the whole tourist thing after that.

  Being extra cautious, Ramos drove around the block to check for anything suspicious before parking on the street about half a block away from Blake’s building. As we walked to the door, I rummaged in my purse for the key, while Ramos surveyed the street for anyone who might look interested in us.

  Getting his okay, we entered the building. “The apartment is on the sixth floor, so the elevator is over there, but it’s really slow.”

  “Which staircase?” Ramos asked.

  “Blake’s apartment is on this side of the building,” I said, pointing to the right.

  “We’ll take the stairs,” Ramos said, thinking he didn’t want to be stuck in an elevator if anything went wrong. I nodded, and we started up. By the time we got to Blake’s floor, I was out of breath, but relieved that we’d made it without meeting anyone along the way.

  At the end of the hall, I inserted the key and turned the knob. “Wait,” Ramos said, and pushed me behind him while he shoved the door open. From what I could see, nothing looked out of place. Still, Ramos wasn’t taking any chances. “Wait here until I call you.”

  He disappeared inside, and I waited, counting all the way to twenty before he came back. “It’s clear,” he said, pulling me in and shutting the door before throwing the deadbolt. �
��Okay, let’s get to work. Where’s the stash?”

  He followed me to the table and chairs in the kitchen. “It’s under the rug. We’ll have to move the table out of the way.”

  After moving the chairs, then the table, we rolled the rug up, uncovering some loose boards. Four of them were stuck together, and Ramos pried them up to reveal a cubby hole. A metal box rested inside. Ramos pulled it out and set it on the table.

  Pushing a switch clicked it open. Inside, we found a large, black leather binder. Several tabs opened to reveal names, some with pictures and some without. I turned to the “C” tab and found the name Cypher, but no picture. Listed on several pages were notes of threats and operations tied to him, along with information about how he worked.

  I began reading, but Ramos stopped me. “We need to go. You can look at this later. Let’s get your things.”

  “Okay. My room’s this way.” He followed me into the bedroom. “My suitcase is under the bed.” While he got it out, I grabbed my clothes from the drawers and began stuffing everything into the bag. I found my toothbrush and lotion in the bathroom and threw them in too. Before Ramos zipped it up, I stopped him. “Can I change my clothes first?”

  “Sure. But make it quick.”

  He left the room, and I shrugged out of my skirt and ruined leggings. Then I put on a clean pair of underwear, jeans and a comfy shirt. Feeling ten times better, I slipped on some clean socks and then my boots. Quickly stuffing the dirty clothes in another compartment, I zipped it up. Then found the bag with my chocolate marshmallows on the dresser and stuffed that in as well.

  I opened the door to find Ramos leaning against the wall with his arms folded. “Are you ready?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I want to grab a couple of diet sodas from the fridge. Is that okay? Oh, and there’s a box of chocolates in Blake’s room we should get too.”

  He shook his head, but got the chocolates while I got the sodas, and we were ready to go. He peered through the door viewer, then unlocked the deadbolt and pulled it open. “Wait here,” he said, and walked down the hall to look over the staircase. “Okay, you can come.”

  That left me with my luggage, purse, chocolates, sodas and Blake’s binder. Balancing the folder over the sodas and box of chocolates in one hand, I pulled the luggage through the door, but the wheels hit the door stopper and tipped over, knocking the folder from my hands and sending the cans of soda rolling down the hall. Worse, the lid to the box of chocolates popped open, and a few fell out.

  Horrified, I went for the chocolates first, picking two up from the carpet and wiping them off with my fingers. As I started to place them back in the box, Ramos stopped me. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s the five second rule,” I answered. “They should be all right. Besides, these babies cost over a buck each; there’s no way I can throw them out.”

  “Okay. Then why don’t you just eat them?” His brow lifted in a challenge.

  My lips twisted, and I examined the chocolate more closely. After making sure there were no hairs, I popped it in my mouth. As it melted, my lips turned up in a grin. “Umm... this is amazing. You want the other one?”

  “No. You go ahead. I’ll just take one of these.” He picked one out of the box and put it in his mouth, thinking there was no way he was going to eat anything off that carpet. Who knew what kinds of diseases lurked on the surface? There could be vomit, or urine, or even poop.

  “Stop that!” I said.

  He snickered, put the lid on the box and gathered the sodas, then got my luggage straightened out with the box of chocolates and sodas inside the front zipper. While he did that, I still had one more chocolate that was beginning to melt on my fingers but, after what he’d said, I didn’t know if I could eat it or not.

  I sighed, but looked it over closely. Finding nothing, I popped it in my mouth and licked the chocolate off my fingers. I glanced up to find Ramos shaking his head. I ignored him and threw my purse over my shoulder and grabbed Blake’s binder.

  Ramos started down the stairs with my luggage, so I quickly locked the door and followed behind, hoping I wasn’t going to die from some disease, but what the heck? The chocolate was totally worth it. Ramos held the door open for me. As I passed him, he broke into a big grin. Now what?

  “You need to lick your lips,” he said.

  I did, tasting chocolate on my tongue. “Is that better?”

  “Yeah.”

  I listened real hard to his thoughts, but as far as I could tell, he was telling the truth. Still, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, just to make sure.

  Ramos switched back into bodyguard mode, watching all the people and cars for threats, so I did the same. Closer to our car, I noticed something familiar about the man in a car driving toward us. As he passed, I recognized him. “Hey, that’s Louis, Blake’s driver.”

  “What?” Ramos asked, halting mid-step. Just then, a black car careened around the corner. “Get down!” Ramos jerked me with him to the ground, just as gunfire erupted around us. He pulled me under him and rolled next to a cement planter on the sidewalk.

  We stayed put until the shooting stopped, then heard the car speed away. “Are you okay?” Ramos asked.

  “Yeah, I think so.” The only thing that hurt was my bruised shoulder from the night before. I must have landed on it again. “You?”

  “I’m fine.”

  A man hurried to us, speaking in French. As Ramos helped me up, the man pulled a cell phone from his pocket and made a call. More people stood nearby, but everyone else on the street had scattered. I picked up the binder, and Ramos went after my luggage.

  “Reste ici. Les policiers sont en route,” the man said. “Ils arrivent.”

  I nodded, picking up the police part. “I think he called the police,” I told Ramos as he joined me, lugging my bag. I gasped. “Are those bullet holes in my luggage?” Not only were there bullet holes, but brown liquid seeped out of the pocket holding the cans of soda. I quickly unzipped it and took the cans out before it spread all over my clothes.

  “Huh,” Ramos said, thinking my bag had taken the brunt of the attack, and probably saved us from getting shot. “Why don’t I put your bag in the car while we wait? It might be safer there.” He pushed the button to pop the trunk. There was a dull clunk, but nothing happened. “Shit! Get back!” Ramos grabbed my hand, and we both turned to run, practically knocking over the Frenchman who’d called the police. A second later, the car exploded.

  The blast knocked us off our feet. Lucky for me, I landed on top of the nice Frenchman. I was draped over his lower back with my face resting on his soft butt. Before I could get off of him, he rolled over, and there I was with my head in his lap and looking into his startled gaze.

  With a burst of French words, he sat up. I scrambled to get off of him, but couldn’t get my arms under me without an embarrassing face-plant, or putting my hands where I shouldn’t. He spoke again before grabbing my upper arms and pushing me into a sitting position. Still muttering under his breath, he steadied me until I could sit on my own, then scrambled to his feet.

  On the other side of me, Ramos groaned, then rolled onto his back and sat up. Beside him, my luggage rested crookedly on its side with one of the wheels still spinning. It even looked like it was smoking a little. Ramos didn’t fare much better. He must have taken the brunt of the blast. His clothes had burn marks all over them, and his cheek and brow were scraped with streaks of blood.

  I glanced at my own clothes. My purse was still slung over my shoulder, and relief washed over me to find my leather jacket unscathed, at least what I could see of it. My jeans were torn though, and my head hurt. I reached up to find gravel and blood across my temple.

  Flames engulfed the car, but Ramos was thinking that it hadn’t been a big bomb. Otherwise, there would have been a lot more collateral damage, meaning we’d probably be dead. Good thing he’d taken out rental insurance. He glanced at me, thinking how close we’d come to getting killed. Twice in a
matter of minutes. What was up with both the guns and the bomb? Were they two separate attacks, or just overkill?

  Slowly standing, he came to my side and helped me up. I went into his arms, shaking like a leaf. The sound of sirens got closer. Then, all at once, the police arrived. Soon, a fire truck pulled up, and water sprayed onto the car.

  A policeman came toward us with his arms outstretched, trying to move everyone back who had gathered to gawk. The man who’d called the police hurried to his side, pointing at me and Ramos with all kinds of hand gestures. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was telling him all about my inappropriate brush with his crotch.

  The policeman nodded before coming over. “Cette voiture, c’était la votre?”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but Ramos spoke. “Je ne parle pas français.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Is that your car?”

  “Yes. And someone took a shot at us, too. We need you to call Gabriel Dumont. Tell him who we are and what happened. This is Shelby Nichols, and I’m her bodyguard, he’ll understand.”

  “Inspecteur Dumont?” he asked. Ramos nodded, and the policeman called to another officer. “One moment, please.” He left us to talk to the other officers and then pulled out a phone. He spoke for a few minutes, then put the phone into his pocket and came back. “Please come with me. We will take you to the Inspecteur.”

  “I need my stuff,” I told him, pointing at my luggage and Blake’s binder. Ramos glanced at me, thinking that there probably wasn’t much left inside that I could salvage after getting shot and blown up. But, what the hell, it made for a nice souvenir. My husband would take one look at that and never let me out of the house again. “You’re probably right,” I agreed. “I’ll have to ditch it, but not before I see what’s salvageable.”

  Ramos grinned and grabbed my luggage, while the policeman stooped over to pick up the binder. He handed it to me. “This way,” he said, and ushered us to the police car. He opened the trunk for my luggage, and the back door for us.

  After we crawled in, he left to talk to another officer, and I burrowed into Ramos’ chest. His arms came around me and held me tight. After a moment, my shivering stopped, and I could finally breathe normally again. “I guess we shouldn’t have come back here.”