Oxblood

by AnnaLisa Grant

  “So, what is all this?” I asked Claudia as I took in all the switches and buttons of the fake laundry service van. It was tall enough for us to stand in, but only by an inch. “It doesn’t look like we’ll be able to see them. No monitors.”

  “We won’t. We didn’t have enough time to install cameras, or someone on the inside to ensure that they’d meet where we could watch,” she said. The disappointment in her voice told me she didn’t like not being able to see what was going on. “The best we could do was put microphones in the guys’ buttons and one in the brooch Eva is wearing.”

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “We wait,” she answered simply. “And since we don’t have any beer in here, we can’t play Never Have I Ever.” She laughed and tweaked a few buttons, then held a pair of headphones to her left ear.

  “Is that really how you all tell your stories to one another?” I asked.

  “Not really. It’s just something dumb we do sometimes to take the edge off. Are you asking because you want to know my story?” she smirked.

  “Oh my gosh! No! I’m sorry if it sounded that way. I wasn’t prying, really,” I said, flustered.

  “It’s okay, Vic. I don’t mind telling you. Everyone else knows. You might as well join the club.” Claudia flipped a few more switches and then turned a dial from headphone to speaker. “After things with acting took a dive, I went back to college. I thought I’d major in theater and then teach. I had to take a theater tech class as part of the major’s requirements.

  “The school had this ultrasophisticated system to control the lights, curtains, stage, and props. I ended up becoming really good friends with a tech TA who was majoring in computer science but minoring in theater tech.” I gave her a curious look. That was the weirdest combination I had ever heard of. “I know, right? Well, he would talk about all the things that can be done on computers and I would listen. Pretty soon, we were hanging out and he was showing me all these different hacks and teaching me how to code new programs, and it just made sense to me. It was like a light went on inside my brain. I started seeing things differently, experimenting with different operating systems, and even building my own programs.”

  “So how did that land you here?”

  “I had been dating this other guy for about six months when I found out he had been cheating on me the whole time. When I confronted him about it, he totally lied. And when the other two girls came with me, he acted like we were all crazy and delusional.”

  “Two other girls? Jerk!”

  “Yep! Well, after almost a year of working on my mad computer-hacking skills, I was well equipped to make his life a living hell.” She smiled sinisterly.

  “Oh my God, Claudia! What did you do?” I had a feeling this story was going to be way better than the time I helped Tiffany let all the air out of her cheating ex’s tires.

  She twisted her mouth to the side in feigned nervousness. “I hacked into the college’s system, changed his grades, and erased two entire semesters of his work.”

  “HO-LY crap! That is some serious vengeance,” I said, amazed.

  “That was just the beginning. I added a note on his school demographics form indicating that Steven would prefer to be called Stephanie because he was going through gender reassignment. I also had a subscription to a girly magazine sent to him at his parents’ address.” She gave a little snicker. “Too much?”

  “Oh no. That is just enough crazy to know not to screw with you.”

  “If only that were the end.” She raised her eyebrows and I began to realize that the sweet girl-next-door Claudia was anything but. “I changed his address with the US Postal Service to a biker bar on the other side of town known for its unsavory characters. When he found out where it was, he had to go all the way down there to get any mail they didn’t toss.”

  “And that’s what got you in trouble with the law,” I surmised.

  “Yeah. They aren’t kidding when they say messing with people’s mail is a federal offense. So I created a couple of new identities and split town,” she said.

  “What about your family?”

  Claudia’s lighthearted manner in which she told her Carrie Underwood song–inspired story disappeared. Her expression turned flat and hesitant.

  “They had already disowned me a long time before any of that happened. They’re hardcore conservatives from South Korea. I was fresh out of high school and dating a white guy I met at an audition. They told me to break it off with him because he wasn’t Korean. They put up with it for a little while. I think they thought it would be a phase, but when I broke up with that guy and started seeing a black guy, it got even worse. I moved out when I was nineteen and lived my own life, which was not what they wanted. It took a while, but they eventually realized that I wasn’t going to take over the family store, marry a guy they picked out for me, and only eat traditional Korean food. I would never live the life they wanted, so they disowned me.

  “So even though I technically have family out there, I don’t really. I’m dead to them, which is why Ian let me on his team.” Claudia switched the knob and put one side of the headphones back up to her ear. When she heard nothing, she pulled it off and switched the knob back again.

  “Oh, Claudia,” I said sympathetically.

  “It’s all good. I wasn’t made for that life. I mean, they came to America for a reason, you know? I considered reaching out to them when I decided to go to college. I thought they might be proud of me, but then I remembered that I was going to college for theater, not business or law or medicine. And college probably wasn’t going to sway my preference in men.” She sighed like it was the period to her sentence.

  “Thanks for being so open.” Sitting in the surveillance van and listening to Claudia share her story reminded me of empty nights at the diner when Tiffany and I would sit at the counter and talk over pie and coffee. “All that’s left is for Adam, Carter, and Eva to tell me their stories and I’ll know everyone’s. Although I’m pretty sure Carter isn’t going to spill the beans anytime soon. He strikes me as the kind of guy who likes to be mysterious.”

  “Oh my God! I swear he’s going to introduce himself as James Bond one of these days,” she laughed. “So you know Ian’s and Damon’s stories?”

  “Yeah. Ian told me last night, and Damon found me on the balcony in the back bedroom the night we played Never Have I Ever. I think he felt bad,” I told her.

  “You’re a lucky girl. I’ve been on Ian’s team two years and he still hasn’t told me,” she said.

  “I’ll be leaving soon, so he probably figures it’s not a big deal,” I said with hesitation.

  “No worries. He’ll tell me when he thinks I need to know.” She pulled two bottles of water out of a small cooler under the counter with all the knobs and dials and handed me one. “So I know I’m breaking the rule and talking about Damon’s story without his permission, but, poor guy, huh? Watching your whole family murdered. What an awful thing for a kid to go through.”

  “I know! Wait—he was a kid when he saw his family murdered?” That wasn’t what he told me at all, unless I wasn’t remembering correctly.

  “Yeah. A Mafia family came through town and wanted his father’s pharmacy in their back pocket. When he refused, they killed his family while Damon hid under the back counter. I thought you said he told you his story?” Claudia’s face was as puzzled as mine.

  “He did. But he said that he was a police officer. That the Mafia came in and killed any cops who wouldn’t go along with them, and slaughtered their families as collateral. I assumed because he was still alive that he had gotten out somehow. But that they had killed his family.”

  I thought about my conversation with Damon that night on the balcony. “Damon never actually said his family had been killed. He said that some officers chose to side with the Mafia while others who didn’t were either killed or their
families were killed. I assumed because he was here that his family had been killed.” I stood up in the tall van and shuffled my feet. “Why would he tell us two different stories?”

  “Maybe his real story isn’t as exciting as he thinks everyone else’s is. Or maybe it’s actually more horrific than what he told either of us,” she said.

  “Maybe.” The uneasy wheels were turning in my head. “Did he tell you in a group setting, like Never Have I Ever, or alone?”

  “He told me one night when we were both a little lonely, if you know what I mean,” she said sheepishly. “I was missing my little sister a lot. We shared stories about our families and that’s when he told me.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “What’s going on in there?” Claudia pointed to my head like she could see the wheels turning.

  “I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right.”

  I thought about the stories Damon told us. What was the difference between the two? Both were about him losing his family. He was a little boy in Claudia’s and a cop in mine.

  “It’s like he told us stories he thought we wanted to hear. You needed to feel connected to someone who understood what it was like to miss family. I needed to know that I was safe and that finding Gil was a reality. Who better to do that than a former cop?”

  I searched my memory for all the times I was with Damon. He had always been so charming. Too charming. The way he kissed my hand the day we met. How he rubbed my back to calm my nerves when we discovered Bianca on the hotel surveillance. Laughing and teaching me Italian curse words when we were all worried about Ian. It was all to disarm me.

  It finally clicked when I remembered something he’d said when he trained me:

  You have to know who the imposter is. We take months, sometimes years, and embed ourselves into the enemy’s family just so we can find out even the smallest detail about their organization. We become one with them . . . so much a part of who they are that they don’t pay attention to the tiny details. You have to pay attention to the details, Victoria.

  “Claudia, can you get into the account used to communicate with Command? Check if there’s any recent emails,” I asked. My gut was doing flips, and I could almost feel the pieces of the puzzle floating around my head snapping into place.

  “Of course,” she answered as she tapped away at the keyboard. “That’s weird. There are no recent emails from Damon to Command.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. There’s nothing.”

  “Is there any other way he would have reached out to Command?”

  “No, but Ian could have.”

  “He left a message for Director Thatcher, but as of last night he still hadn’t heard back from her.”

  I thought for a minute before I spoke again. I let out an exasperated sigh. “I can’t believe I ignored such blaring red flags! Damon was the only one who ever asked about what Ian and I had found in the journal. Command was mysteriously taking forever to respond to him. The only lead Ian and I had for Gil’s whereabouts was conveniently murdered. And Damon lied to us about his story in order to lull us into a false trust. Claudia, Damon is the mole.”

  “What mole? What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “Ian and I found something in the journal. Gil was telling us that there’s a mole in Rogue. We thought it was Bianca. But it’s not. It’s Damon! We have to warn Ian and the others before it’s too late.” Fear made my voice tremble and my heart pounded inside my chest.

  “Okay.” Claudia’s voice had an edge to it. “Everyone is already in place so we’re about to become an army of two.” She pulled two guns from where they had been strapped underneath the counter and handed one to me. “This is a .22 caliber pistol. Do you remember Adam’s training?”

  “Yes,” I said confidently. I already had two unplanned experiences with a gun and handled myself pretty well. However misplaced the feelings may have been, I felt in control.

  “If you’re not sure, you can stay here if you want, Vic. I’ll go in and—”

  “No. I’m going with you. Gil may be in there, and now is not the time to sit back and see what happens. We are Rogue-14 and we stick together,” I said resolutely.

  “Okay. Take a deep breath and follow me.”

  She opened the back of the van quietly, slid out, and I shut the door behind us. The click of the latch seemed so loud, like an announcement for our enemy that we were on the move. We stepped onto the sidewalk. Five paces into our rescue mission and we were stopped cold in our tracks.

  “Going somewhere, ladies?” the voice said, inches behind me.

  Chapter 20

  Bianca stepped around in front of us, the cold steel of her gun pressed to my temple.

  Where the hell was Adam and his expert aim?

  Rage boiled up inside me at the sight of the woman who had led the ambush at the hotel. The woman who was surely responsible for the thugs who had used Ian as a punching bag. The woman who had turned on her own.

  “You’re early, Victoria,” she said in an Eastern European accent. The sun glinted off the gun’s barrel. In one quick move, she grabbed me with her left hand and held the gun to my back with the right. “But since you are here now, we might as well go in—after you empty your weapons, that is.”

  “What the hell, Bianca? I thought you were one of us?” Claudia said through gritted teeth.

  “I was, once. But I received a proposal that was much more lucrative than anything INTERPOL could ever offer,” she hissed. “Now, the guns, ladies? Please don’t make this any more difficult for me than it already is.” She smiled at us, showing two rows of perfect teeth.

  Claudia hesitantly released the clip from her gun. I did the same and Bianca snatched them, stowing them in the bag slung over her shoulder.

  “Thank you, darlings. Now, Claudia, be a dear and walk ahead a few paces so I can get to know Victoria a little better.” She grabbed my elbow, her fingers cutting into the flesh on my arm.

  “Let Vic go, Bianca. She’s not even a real Rogue agent,” Claudia pleaded as we walked.

  “Are you kidding me? Victoria is our ticket. No one on your pathetic little team is going to let anything happen to her. She stays,” she replied harshly.

  She directed us to an alley behind the pastry shop, then through the back door. We maneuvered around giant electric mixers and massive bags of flour until we entered the front of the empty store. It smelled sweet and sugary, just the way a pastry shop should. The glass case was filled with colorful treats, and the wooden shelves behind the counter displayed confections of every shape and size.

  Bianca pointed to a small table with chairs against the front window of the shop. “Sit,” she commanded, like we were dogs.

  “Where are the others?” Claudia asked bitingly.

  “They’ll be here soon enough,” Bianca replied, turning on her heels and leaving. Two armed men entered through the kitchen and stood guard when Bianca left. One of them had a bandage over his nose, and I recognized him as Thug One, the guy who I’d fought in the factory home base. He winked at me and I knew he was itching to settle the score.

  I looked around the shop, taking note of any other escape routes, but couldn’t find anything besides the front and back doors. Besides, making a run for it would be impossible with the goons standing over us. We had no weapons, no backup plan, and no support from Command. When Ian, Carter, and Eva arrived, they’d be stripped of their weapons, too.

  I put my face in my hands and tried not to cry out of frustration. Ian kept me on the team because I was supposed to be observant and intuitive. Instead, I let my guard—and Ian and the team—down.

  “What happened to Adam?” I whispered to Claudia.

  “Adam is an expert marksman. He would have taken Bianca out if he saw her holding a gun on you. Damon must have gotten to him already.” Claudia dropped her eyes
sadly. “Adam is gone.”

  “Shut it. Don’t make me use this before it’s time.” Thug One shifted his gun menacingly.

  I was defeated. I had flown halfway around the world to find my brother only to be trapped in a pastry shop that was surely going to be my deathbed. I wouldn’t let myself cry, though. If Paolo were going to kill me, so be it. And if Damon were the one who pulled the trigger, I’d never give him the satisfaction of seeing just how scared I was.

  Voices echoed from the back room. The tone was casual. I heard Carter’s voice ring out a too-loud guffaw as he pretended to find someone’s joke funny. Despite knowing they were about to walk into the same trap Claudia and I had, my body flooded with relief.

  Eva emerged first. Her eyes widened when she saw that Claudia and I were not only there, but that we were being guarded by two men with guns. We got the same response from Ian and Carter as they followed her in. But the biggest eyes came from Gil as he walked through the door and saw his little sister being guarded by a trained gunman. It took everything in me not to respond.

  Poker face, Vic. Poker face.

  I took Gil in from head to toe. He was thinner than he was when he left home, and he had dark rings around his eyes like he hadn’t slept in weeks. He was in desperate need of a haircut, but he was still my handsome brother. And most importantly, he was alive.

  “Who is this?” Ian asked. “I thought this was a closed-door deal, Paolo?” Ian faced the last man to enter the room. “What’s with the girls and gunmen?”

  So that was the infamous Paolo. He was tall like Ian and Carter, but his short, graying black hair made it difficult to guess his age. He wore a khaki suit with a white shirt halfway unbuttoned. He didn’t even try to hide the smug look on his face as he drew his gun.