by Vicki Hinze
Afterward, Needle prepared a second shot and injected Amanda. She ignored him, but laid a glare on M. C. Harding. “What is wrong with you? They killed your wife, and you’re helping them?”
His face mottled red. “I have no choice. I have a daughter living with her grandparents. I can’t lose her, too.”
“Shut him up,” Needle said, dropping the used syringes into his briefcase and snapping its locks. They clicked into place.
The beefy guard put a bullet right between Harding’s eyes. The suppressor on his gun glowed in the light. He slumped over, dead before he hit the table.
Adrenaline rocketed through Amanda’s veins. She darted a glance at Mark. He gave her the slightest nod to be still and mouthed the words “In plain sight,” adopting a code phrase to communicate signals between them.
He was following standard operating procedure for situations where two operatives were being taken captive by hostiles. She nodded that she’d gotten it.
“Give these two five minutes and then haul them to the van.” Needle turned and calmly left the interview room. “I’ll meet you at the helicopter.”
Vans, helicopters, guns inside the walls of the prison...GRID clearly had infiltrated the installation to get this kind of access and cooperation. The question was, through whom?
Regardless, it didn’t take a genius to figure out she and Mark had the deck stacked against them. Harding was dead. Murdered. And they were witnesses. And that was an aside to their own problems.
Without a doubt, they were marked for death.
Chapter Six
Amanda’s head throbbed, pulsing in her temples, and her throat felt parched. Definitely, one of the worst hangovers she’d had in her life. Her stomach pitched and rolled and she cracked open one eye.
Pale wooden floors. Her uniform hanging on the bedside chair. The sun streaking in through her tab-top bedroom drapes. She bobbed her head, sniffed, tapped the mattress with her fingertips. Her pillow. Her sheets. Her mattress. She looked across the room to the far wall and then the floor. Her sleek lacquered furniture and geometric red and black rugs.
She was at home? In her apartment in D.C.?
Disoriented, she frowned. Rubbed her head to shove down the pain coursing through her and threatening revolt by her stomach. Opening both eyes, she inspected further. Her silk robe lay draped over the foot of the bed and she looked to see what she was wearing. Her hot-pink T-shirt and panties. Her skin crawled. They were hers, but they were not the underwear she had put on that morning.
What was going on here? Fighting panic, she sat straight up—and remembered M. C. Harding. The glazed look in his eyes, the bullet wound in the center of his forehead. The abduction at the prison. Mark!
Yet here she lay at home. In her own bed, in her own apartment, wearing her own clothes.
She definitely had not dreamed all that—or the trip to Providence, multiple attempts on her life, and certainly not Mark. She rubbed her eyes hard, fearing they were tricking her. But her surroundings didn’t change. This was her apartment. She was at home. The memories of Florida seemed extremely vivid but she’d been overworked and through a lot lately thanks to Paul Reese and Thomas Kunz. Maybe she had dreamed it all. Could that be possible?
It didn’t feel possible. It felt too real and raw. Needing validation, she sniffed her wrist and inner forearm. Mark’s scent on her skin. No, that was real. He was real. Dr. Vargus had predicted milder symptoms would precede any residual blackouts, and she didn’t remember having any symptoms whatsoever. Could she have had them and not remember them?
Possibly. She had lost three months, after all.
With injections.
She looked at her inner arm, saw the fresh needle track, and remembered the injection at the prison. Saw the wound on her upper arm where the bullet had grazed her. Her stomach clutched. Mark was real. But this—she looked around her apartment—was not. It couldn’t be.
Kunz would never direct his minions to bring her back to her apartment. Why would he? Failing to find any logic in that, she emptied her mind. So if not her apartment in D.C., what was this place?
Possibilities streamed in a rush, one upon the other. She shook her head to clear it. Saw the photograph of her, Kate and Colonel Drake at her promotion party parked on the corner of her dresser. Same photo. She’d framed it herself.
Her pearls were dangling from the corner of the mirror. Her driving gloves lay on the gleaming dresser top beneath them. She walked to the bathroom. Her toothbrush, her teeth-whitening kit, her shower gel and razor. Apparently, Kunz’s minions had brought her home. And Mark was real.
Solid and real and connected to her in a way she’d be hard-pressed to explain because she had no frame of reference for it. God, but she resented being on unfamiliar emotional ground. It scared the spit out of her. Bonds were dangerous, irritating, overrated. Bonds were terrifying.
Feeling fear annoyed her. She cleaned her face and nearly scrubbed the enamel off her teeth, then met her reflection in the mirror. “You need coffee, woman.” She dabbed at her mouth with a fluffy towel then slung it back onto the towel bar, her head still woozy. “Lots and lots of coffee.”
She shuffled down the hallway, shoved her hair back from her face, rounded the corner to the kitchen and came to a dead halt. A woman stood at her kitchen sink. “Who are you, and what are you doing in my kitchen?”
The woman turned toward Amanda and sheer horror flooded her eyes. Her jaw dropped open and her mouth rounded into a perfectly stunned, “Oh, no!”
Amanda’s knees went weak. Down to her pink underwear, the woman was her mirror image!
Before she could recover, the woman bolted out the back door.
Amanda chased her through the yard, cutting through an island of blossoming jasmine and gardenias. Branches slapped at her legs. When she rounded an aged oak, two men dressed in black suits intercepted her and blocked her path. “That’s far enough, Amanda,” one of them said.
The woman disappeared from sight. Amanda. She didn’t know these men. How had they known her name? How had they known she and not the other woman was the real Amanda? She glared up at them, and a third man joined them. Beefy. Still sporting black eyes. Glimpses of him at the prison, from her first GRID visit that ended with her buried in a tomb, flashed through her mind.
Her chest went tight, her knees threatened to fold, and she locked them. None of this was a dream. But all of it was a nightmare.
“What’s going on here?” Amanda backed up a step to better see Beefy eye to eye.
“This is your neighborhood, your apartment, and you’re free to do what you do in your yard, but you can’t leave it without an escort.”
This wasn’t her apartment or her neighborhood. It was a GRID replica of her apartment and neighborhood. And the woman...a staggering chill charged through her. “Where is Captain Cross?”
Beefy cleared his throat, careful to stay out of striking distance. The bruises on his face had faded from purple and green, but not so much that he didn’t recall the pain of having her break his nose. “He’s being processed.”
“Processed?” What did that mean? Amanda had no idea, but she was certain it wasn’t good. “Would you care to explain?”
“No. You need to go inside and get dressed,” Beefy told her, nodding to the left where a little boy was kicking a ball. “Someone will be over within the hour to talk to you about your new life.”
“My new life?” Temper fueled the confusion in her with heat. Why keep her alive? Why not just kill her? Kunz had to have a compelling reason, and the sooner she discovered what it was, the better. “I’m not through with my old life yet.”
“Don’t come unglued on me.” He backed up a step. “I’d hate to shoot you in front of a kid, but I will. You’re not breaking my nose or anything else of mine again.”
She needed a grip on this place, and she wasn’t going to get it from Beefy or his stalwart companions. That made getting them out of her way her first goal. She could ta
ke Beefy down. He was clumsy and slow. The other two she hadn’t fought before. She took one’s measure and figured her odds at sixty percent. Seventy on the other. He feared her. But she’d bide her time and if possible avoid violence in front of the boy.
With a parting glare at Beefy, she turned around and walked back toward her first-floor apartment. She didn’t see his relief at not having to tangle with her again, but she felt it.
“That’s the hellcat who put you down?” the second guard asked, disbelief in his tone. “She’s tiny.”
“She’s lethal,” Beefy answered, irritated and not trying to hide it. “You get off guard for a second with her and she’ll kick you all over this compound.”
Compound. So they were back in the Middle East. At the GRID compound. She needed time to absorb, to get the lay of the land and devise an escape plan. A woman—the mirror image of her—in her kitchen. A replica of her entire home and neighborhood.
Replicas.
Cold terror sank into her bones, and Amanda feared she knew how GRID had become so effective at accessing classified information and intelligence.
And, man, did she hope she was wrong.
Her clothes hung in the closet, filled the dresser drawers. She pulled on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers, and fixed herself a cup of coffee.
There were cameras everywhere, recording every move she made in the apartment, and she’d spotted at least three separate audio devices. The whole place was wired to the rafters.
Every move, every word, every breath was monitored.
Sipping from her cup, she looked out a window and saw the little boy still playing kickball. Now, there she could get answers. Kids were unguarded and blissfully innocent and honest.
She walked outside, the steaming coffee cup in her hand. He looked about five or six, pale blond hair and full cheeks ruddy from the heat and from running to kick the ball on the stretch of lawn between two islands of shrubs. There were cameras mounted in the trees. Red dots lighted on them. She counted six, and determined there wasn’t a spot of grass in the yard where anyone in it wouldn’t be watched and heard.
The ball came toward her. She set down her cup and kicked it back.
The little boy grinned, returned the ball to her. On the edge of the sidewalk, Beefy and his companion watched, clearly wary, but they didn’t interfere.
“I’m Amanda,” she told the boy. “I live here now.”
“My name’s Jeremy.” He whacked the ball. “I live over there.” He pointed to the apartment next door.
“That makes us neighbors.” She kicked the blue ball back to him. Neighbors were trusted. Strangers were not.
“Do you have a mom and a dad or just a mom?”
Apparently, he lived with just his mother. “Both,” she lied, seeing no sense in telling him she was for all intents and purposes an orphan and had been most of her life. “But they live in their own house.”
“My dad doesn’t live with us anymore, but I got a mom.” He belted the ball a strong one. It bounced off a spike-leafed bush and back into the expanse of thick, lush grass. “She’s a doctor.”
Divorced? “That’s an important job.” Amanda kicked the ball to him, saw Beefy dial a number on his cell phone and speak briefly into it. While she couldn’t hear what he said, that he wasn’t happy about her game of kickball was obvious.
Seconds later, a lean woman in her early thirties rushed out of Jeremy’s apartment in a green bathrobe. “Jeremy!” she shouted. “I told you not to speak to strangers.”
“She’s not a stranger.” He picked up the ball and held it to his chest. “She’s Amanda. She lives here.”
“Go inside, honey. Right now.”
Jeremy frowned, clearly considering rebellion, but in the end, he turned and silently walked into the apartment. The door closed behind him.
“I’m sorry.” Looking embarrassed and exasperated, Jeremy’s mother glanced at Beefy and then back at Amanda. “I hope he didn’t bother you.”
“Not at all. I was enjoying his company.” Amanda smiled and extended her hand to the woman. “Amanda West.” Beefy’s companion started to walk over. Beefy grabbed his arm, held him in place.
Jeremy’s mom shook Amanda’s hand. “Joan Foster,” she said, one eye on Beefy. “Again, I’m sorry. I’ll talk to him so he doesn’t bother you anymore.”
Amanda’s initial instincts were that Joan Foster was a decent woman, and that she was terrified. Her body language proved it—she fell just short of wringing her hands—but it was her scent that was a dead giveaway. Nothing in the world—nothing—smelled quite so distinct as fear. “Please don’t, Joan. Jeremy wasn’t bothering me. I approached him to play ball.”
“Oh, okay.” Joan cast a confused look at Beefy, who obviously had called her to end the powwow between Amanda and Jeremy. “I’d say welcome to the neighborhood, but under the circumstances...” She turned and walked back into her apartment.
What circumstances? Amanda would have loved to ask, but Joan didn’t linger long enough to get the question out—and maybe that was for the best. One of the first rules in Intel was not to ask questions you couldn’t answer. For now, Amanda had no answers, only questions.
The hour came and went and no one appeared to talk with Amanda about her new life or anything else. Patience never had been one of her strong suits, but fortunately neither had stupidity been one of her shortcomings. Until she knew what this place and these people were about, she had to move softly and slowly. Especially considering Mark was also here. And being processed. Her actions definitely could impact him, and she couldn’t afford to forget that.
Amanda stayed put in the apartment, observing Beefy. His companions were gone. Beefy stayed put on the sidewalk, observing her. Three hours passed, and then four. Another man drove up in a blue Camry. He and Beefy exchanged a few words and then Beefy left in the car. The replacement guard turned toward her, and she recognized him. Her blood boiled.
The driver of the black Lexus who’d winged her.
Clenching her jaw and gritting her teeth, she debated killing him and decided against it, for now. She had more to lose by giving in to her temper than to gain by restraining it.
Jeremy went back outside with his ball.
Amanda didn’t hesitate. She hit the door and joined him. “Ready for a game?” she called out.
Jeremy smiled, showing her every tooth in his head, which did not include either of his front teeth. Both were missing.
The Lexus maggot straightened from his slump against the street lamp. Alert and obviously uneasy.
Jeremy and Amanda kicked the ball back and forth a few times. Then Jeremy dived for a shot and kicked crosswise. The ball popped the guard right in the chin.
“Ouch!” He cupped his face and stomped across the yard, heading for Jeremy.
When he raised his hand to hit the boy, Amanda saw a cold gleam in his eye that she recognized too easily, and her stomach clutched with the same horror and dread she’d felt as a child. She grabbed Maggot’s arm, twisted, and spun him around to face her. “Don’t even think about hitting the kid.” He took a swing at her.
She blocked it, followed with a right uppercut to his jaw. He stumbled backward and fell to the grass with a healthy “Oomph!”
Jeremy stood statue still, his eyes wide with fear. His little chin began trembling.
Amanda reached over and pulled Jeremy behind her, blocking his vision of the guard and planting herself between them, sending the guard a clear message. To get to the boy, he’d have to go through her. “Get off our grass.”
Jeremy gasped, burrowed his head against the backs of her legs.
“Watch it, West. I know about you and I’m not running.”
“You probably don’t run any better than you shoot or fight. Unless you want to go toe-to-toe, I recommend you get off our grass. You’re interrupting the game.” He didn’t move and her voice shook with outrage. “You can do that, right? Or are you only good at hitting kids? I’m sure
Thomas Kunz is going to love hearing about this.”
“Don’t try pushing me around.” Maggot straightened his jacket with a shoulder shrug. “Mr. Kunz doesn’t care what you say.”
“Are you misinformed or just stupid?” Amanda asked. “Kunz has his faults, but there’s no way he’d put up with a GRID member beating on a kid, especially without his say-so.”
“How could you know that?” The guard pulled himself to his feet. Slapped at the blades of grass clinging to his slacks. “You can’t know that.”
“He was abused, genius. He knows what it’s like to be on the receiving end of ham-fisted cowards, and there’s no way he’d tolerate a lack of discipline in his people.” She swiped her hair back from her face. She was certain Kunz had no such hesitations, but this guy didn’t have to know that. “Don’t these jerks give you any background on your own organization?”
Insulted, but clearly unsure whether or not he should believe her, he ignored her and warned Jeremy. “Next time, you watch where you’re kicking that ball.”
“It was an accident,” Amanda said from between her teeth, then issued him fair warning. “If this kid has an accident—any accident—I’m coming for you. So you’d better go out of your way to keep him safe.”
Maggot grunted. “You’re not even armed.”
She pulled her lips back from her teeth in a smile meant to freeze him in place. “You are stupid.” She grunted her disgust. “I’m always armed.”
He swallowed hard, obviously uncertain what to make of that remark. He debated, but apparently decided he didn’t want to know badly enough to find out, because he backed off and returned to the street lamp.
Joan Foster came running out of her apartment, looking frazzled and weary. “Jeremy, are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m fine, Mom.” He smiled up at Amanda. “Can you really beat him up?”
She couldn’t resist a chuckle. “Yes, I can.”
His expression went serious. “Will you teach me?”
