He was wearing a vest, of course. The bullets winding him, but not killing. The head shot would do that.
Two to the chest in quick succession. Check.
One to the head within five seconds after that…
“Charisse,” the Director gasped; recovering from bullets to your Kevlar was not instantaneous. “Don’t you want to know why?”
My gun was trained on his forehead. The muzzle lined up with his frontal lobe.
Fire. Pull the fucking trigger. This is a trap!
“No,” I said and squeezed the trigger.
Maybe he hadn’t expected me to follow orders, after all. Maybe he’d known all along I wasn’t a compliant spy. Expertly trained in every way imaginable - and in several that you wouldn’t want to dream about - but not obedient.
I fired, when a spy would have sought intel. Answers. I fired when a well trained operative would have heeded the words of their superior. I fired when the man who had been a father figure to me begged for a chance to explain.
Well, begging might have been an exaggeration, but no matter. The Director had been prepared for my failure. My failure as a well trained spy.
He simply rolled out of the way with a speed that belied his age and office-like position. He was fit. Trained as well as any of us. And he’d not once let himself slip since becoming the Director.
I stared into the face of a lethal adversary and pulled the trigger again.
And then he was on the move, as Mal yelled out to fucking get it over with, screaming and hissing as punches flew.
“Say the words!” he demanded, as Nick finally wrapped an arm around his neck in a head lock.
The doors at the front of the café smashed open. Reinforcements. Voices raised, bullets flying. Chips of wood and tufts of furniture flew up in the air, and still the Director didn’t say the words.
Now would be the time to leave. To back out the door and let ASI handle this. They didn’t have triggers. I did. But I kept firing. Kept missing. Until it finally dawned on me that he didn’t need to say the words. He’d already won.
I can shoot a target dead centre from twenty-five metres away. And shoot it again and again. And never miss. I can hit a moving target almost as accurately from that distance. Give or take a centimetre of two. I’m quick. I’m good. I’m extremely accurate.
And yet each subsequent bullet since he’d spoken went wide. Missed.
I lowered the gun. Stood in the centre of Sweet Seduction. Chaos and madness surrounded me on all sides.
Mal had been taken out in short order, once Koki and Brook had appeared. Unconscious. Out for the count. Doing exactly what he’d been ordered to do. Distract. Sacrifice himself. Abi was firing on the Director. Ava and Ben waited outside, should he escape. And Caleb and Jason would be on the roof, waiting to offer last minute, dying-in-a-hail-of-.45s, rescue.
It wouldn’t come to that.
The Director had it all planned.
Veritas Lux Mea. The trigger had already been pulled. I was his, I just hadn’t woken up to the fact. I couldn’t kill him. But Abi could.
I moved, sliding in beside the diminutive blonde behind a retro couch, polyester and feathers flying around her head like a halo. She grunted in greeting and offered cover fire until I was settled. The Director offered a shot or two to keep us entertained, but little else.
“He’s hunkered down in the music cave,” Abi said on a panted breath. “Call him out.”
I felt lost. I felt a little bereft. I felt things I’d never felt before. I tried to draw on my earlier anger, but all I felt was defeat.
We’d lost.
I cleared my throat. He’d always known it would come to this.
“Why?” I shouted above the gunfire. It was the question he wanted to hear.
Abi stopped firing. Nick, Brook and Koki followed her lead. We were doing this. Now. Had they realised the trigger had already been pulled, too?
“Have you never wondered why I favoured you so?” the Director asked casually, as if we were sitting in Sweet Seduction sharing a coffee and chocolate nibble, not standing off against each other with lethal intent.
“Favouritism,” I snarled. “Could have fooled me.”
“Oh, I was hard on you, I agree,” he replied, jovially. Playing the role of antagonist to perfection. Fucking not only with my head but ASI’s. All four of those present growled under their breaths.
In the middle of a showdown with the most influential, powerful, and deadly man in New Zealand, I realised I’d found my family. Facing off against a threat to their home, their city, their country, they were angered for a perceived slight against me. I was humbled. I was incapable of words. I was moved beyond measure.
The Director was a master manipulator indeed.
“You’ve been searching for something, Charisse,” he said, his voice carrying easily across the room. “Little did you know, you had it all along.”
“You used me,” I argued, refusing to decipher his words, to add meaning to something that had none.
“Of course,” he acknowledged. “Because I saw potential. Because I knew this day would come and you would choose me. Because I am selfish and I could not let my brother’s only child live without knowing me.”
The world closed in. Breathing became impossible. I felt Abi touch the sleeve of my jacket. I heard Nick say something off to my side. The ceiling lowered; exposed pipes and hidden cameras threatening to crash down on my head. Walls rattled. A crash sounded out from the back of the store. I whimpered.
I never whimpered.
My fingers tightened around the gun in my hand and I stood to my feet.
My arm shook when I lifted the weapon.
My breaths came in short pants, straining my lungs.
My chest felt tight.
My legs felt numb.
Sweat trickled into my eyes.
The Director stood when I stood, a gentleman to the end.
“Fuck you!” I hissed. Fuck him. Fuck him. Fuck him.
Fuck him to the end. I didn’t believe a word out of his lying lips. I wouldn’t believe a word of the filth he was spewing. I could beat the compulsion. I could override the words. I was my own person. No one controlled me. I was trained to do a job, but I wasn’t that person anymore.
I was something else. Someone else. A lethal weapon with a mind of my own. And feelings. So many feelings.
My chest ached.
My heart beat mercilessly against my ribs.
My stomach roiled.
And through it all, the Director just looked at me. Steady grey eyes. High cheekbones. Thick lips. Light brown hair, just like my father’s.
Fuck.
I shook my head. Used two hands to hold the shaking gun level. Gritted my teeth and prepared to fire.
I could do this.
I had to.
“Veritas Lux Mea,” he said. “We are family. And family sticks together.”
It took a second or two. Maybe my ears had been buzzing. Or my brain was too full of questions to decipher the words. Or I’d convinced myself so completely that the trigger had already been pulled.
Maybe a PSYOPS trigger just needed a chemical reaction to take place. Even Pavlov’s dogs took a few brief moments to start drooling.
But eventually the conditioned reaction occurred.
Abi reached for me, as Nick threw himself across the gap between us. A look of regret marring his icy features momentarily.
I shook off the blonde.
I elbowed the ice-man in the face.
I fired a warning shot across the bow of the two peas.
And walked towards the Director.
I felt nothing. I was numb. An empty shell waiting direction. And this man would give it.
“You’ve been like a daughter to me,” he said once I reached his side.
I looked up into eyes that mirrored my own, not caring that I hadn’t seen the resemblance before then.
“Of course,” he added, “you’ve fucked things up
a little, and now must pay. But we are family, Charisse. I would never turn my back on you.”
He wrapped an arm around my shoulders, laid a soft kiss in amongst my hair.
I felt nothing.
“China was unfortunate,” he whispered. “But you can fix that.”
He spun me back towards the ASI operatives.
The blonde was recovering from a wall to the head. The ice-man was dripping blood on the floor and looking disorientated. The peas were thrumming with unbridled fury; they’d make a mistake. They’d be the first I dealt with.
“Kill them,” the Director ordered, and I fired two single shots. To their chests.
They went down with silent screams on their faces, as noise in my ear started to distract. I turned my gun on the ice-man; he’d recover first. I held his cold stare and fired before he even had a chance to raise his gun.
Chest shot. Dead centre. He crumpled to the floor.
I turned to the final threat. Not much of one, she was still curled up against the wall. Pale blue eyes met mine. She flinched. The gun fired. The sound of the bullet hitting her torso was drowned out by frantic shouts inside my ear.
I shook my head. Blinked through the words being hurled at me, and then lifted numb fingers up to my ear and pulled the fucking thing out. I crushed it with my boot when I turned back to face the Director.
“I assume they are not alone,” he said. It wasn’t a question. But I still needed to hear the words. “You’ll have to hunt them down,” he instructed. “I am sorry, but you’ll need to take the fall for all of this.” He waved a hand around the café we were in. A vague encompassing motion that meant more than just what had transpired here this morning.
I watched the Director walk towards Mal. I didn’t recognise the man unconscious on the floor, but I knew him for what he was. My anchor. My handler. The voice in my ear. My eyes darted back to the broken earpiece, then my gaze came up to the small, square glass panes along the front of the shop.
They’d be coming. The Director had to leave.
“You need to leave,” I said, my voice sounding alien to me.
“We will,” he replied, casually throwing an arm around Mal and lifting him up off the store’s floor. “Once you create a safe exit.”
I nodded, took a step toward the front of the shop when a loud crash sounded out over my shoulder, announcing a threat.
I spun, lifted my gun in the same movement, and sighted down the barrel.
Meeting eyes the shade of a deep ocean, recognition flaring, and then spluttering out when numbness hit.
“Kill him,” the Director instructed, in an off-hand manner. “I should think you’d be pleased to get rid of that one.”
I raised the gun higher, aiming for the head, as I’d been trained. Then in the last moment, fired at his chest. Like I had the others.
I stood still, head cocked to the side, pondering this anomaly.
Two to the chest. One to the head. Except when facing multiple assailants and sourcing further ammunition could prove a problem.
Then you always, always, go for the head shot first. And never miss.
I never missed. I never made mistakes. This is what I am. Perfection.
I stalked over to the fallen body; blue-eyes, I told myself. And lifted my gun to his head.
“Firecracker,” he rasped.
And everything changed. The ceiling wasn’t just closing in on me, the whole sky was. Memories and emotions washed through to my very soul. Fear. Pain. Loneliness. Commitment. Loyalty. Determination. Laughter. Excitement. Love. It was all there, emotions I had been denied, had been trained not to experience. All of them, one after the other after the other. Hit after hit after hit.
I staggered to one knee, the hard wood bruising. I felt it.
I sucked in a breath of air. I could feel my lungs expand, my chest heave, my heart skip an absurd beat.
“Charlie Delta?” the Director said over my shoulder.
My gaze landed on blue-eyes. He held his own, no matter what it was he was seeing.
“Let me,” he whispered, but I shook my head.
No. Not this. Not for him. I didn’t want that. Not for him.
“Yes,” he said, determined. Committed. Loyal… to me.
Me. A spy who kills on command. A shell of a woman who isn’t in control and feels nothing.
No. I feel. I’ve felt every damn thing since this man walked into my life. Since blue became my favourite colour.
I swallowed.
“Kill him!” the Director growled.
I raised my gun. My firing hand shaking. Sweat beading my brow. I felt sick. I swallowed back bile. Stomach cramps made it difficult to breathe.
“Let me,” blue-eyes said. Adam. That was his name. Adam.
I held his gaze, nodded my head slowly, and spun when he lifted his own gun, firing off three shots each, in quick succession. Together. The sound of double bullets firing in sync reverberated around the room. Primer floated on the air. Hot and smoky. Familiar.
I sank onto my butt, my mind fuzzy, my head reeling, my stomach churning.
“You fired your gun,” Adam said, sounding stunned and in awe. “You broke the conditioning.”
I lifted a heavy head to look him in the eyes; eyes I’d never tire of staring into.
“What?” I said ineloquently. The world was spinning; I was damned if I’d let it win now.
“Amber says you broke through the mind control. But the trigger needed to be pulled, before you could do it. Even then, she and Nick weren’t sure that you could fight its compulsion. But you did.”
I nodded, not really comprehending Adam’s words.
Then clarity hit.
Nick. I scrambled across the floor, in the direction of the front of the store, trying valiantly to ignore all the puzzle pieces coming together inside my head, only to be caught between going to Abi or going to ASI’s bossman. Abi won in the end. Because Nick was groaning, I told myself.
I heard Adam move behind me, and then say the words, “Clear. It’s clear.” Presumably over the earpieces. But my focus was solely on a splash of platinum hair.
I collapsed next to the blonde, my heart in my throat, words spilling from my lips so quickly, I wasn’t even aware of what I was saying.
“It’s OK,” Abi mumbled. “It’s all right,” she insisted, even as my hands frantically undid her Kevlar vest and searched for breaches in its material.
No bullet had passed through. She’d be bruised. Winded. Maybe have a cracked rib. But not dead.
I sat back on my butt and stared at nothing.
“Charlie,” she said, reaching over and squeezing my arm softly. I felt it. Even if she had the strength of a lamb. “It’s OK.”
“I shot you,” I murmured.
“Yes,” she agreed. “But you missed.”
I hadn’t missed. I never miss. And we both knew it. But somehow I had disobeyed my training. Fought PSYOPS and won.
Two to the chest. One to the head. Except in battle.
I reached up and brushed the blonde strands off her face, staring at the centre of her forehead.
“Fuck me,” a voice, I instantly recognised, said over my shoulder. “How the hell did you do that, Charles?”
“And can you teach us?” Ava added. “Like now. Before our own handlers catch up with what’s just gone down and pay us a visit.”
I looked over my shoulder at my friends, at my former family - a family I hadn’t known I’d had, but who’d come when asked and risked everything - just as Ben came barrelling through the door and smashed his way to his woman.
He glared at me, then wrapped Abi up in his arms, whispering words of love as she whispered words of reassurance back at him.
I moved away. Too full of emotions to remain so near such an inferno. And took in the devastation of Sweet Seduction. It was a mess, but it still stood. It’d just need a make-over. Somehow the fact that I wouldn’t be here to see it left me feeling sad.
“Fallout’s g
onna be a bitch,” Caleb was saying. But my feet had taken me across the room to the one body I couldn’t afford to ignore any longer.
I crouched down next to the Director - Yǐngzi they’d called him - and felt for a pulse. Ludicrous. He had exactly four bullets in the chest, all stopped by his Kevlar. They hadn’t killed him, just stunned him enough to get the last two off.
Two precise holes, rimmed in red, sat side by side on his forehead. Adam’s and mine. Equally as lethal. Either one could have delivered the final blow. But I knew, somehow, that they’d landed in unison. Perfection.
He was my match in every way.
That’s why it hurt.
I stood up and dusted myself off, looking towards where Mal lay, still out cold, but a witness to events. A suspect to take into custody. I stared at him, at someone who’d been a part of my life for the past ten years, almost daily. I felt too much right then.
The others, like him, would need to be found, though. And he might know where they would slink away to and hide. Because hide they would. From me. From all of us. The fallout was indeed going to be a bitch. Whoever else had been involved in Operation Evolution would know their time was up and needed to be found; neutralised. Whoever else my… uncle had pulled into his nefarious plans, convinced us to trust, needed to be contained once and for all.
The task was enormous. I looked across the room to Ava and Caleb, saw them watching me. They both nodded their heads in solidarity. In understanding. They may have been a family I didn’t know existed until only recently, a family I was convinced I couldn’t be a part of forever - too many ghosts lay that way, I was sure - but they were family. Of a sort. And I would not let them face this alone.
Finally, finally, my eyes found Adam’s. He waited off to the side, ignoring the appearance of a guy I knew to be Detective Sergeant Pierce. Away from his colleagues who’d all taken a bullet… from me. For me. Separate and waiting, patiently, but not. His feet fidgeted. His eyes blazed with urgency and need. His face flushed that amusing, yet somehow enticing, crimson. Anger. Fear. I’m not sure which it was.
But he knew.
And he was already shaking his head.
“I’ll come with you. Help you,” he said as soon as I approached.
I reached up and clasped the back of his neck and then hauled his face down to mine and kissed him.
Sweet Seduction Secrets (Sweet Seduction, Book 8): A Love At First Sight Romantic Suspense Series Page 31
