Blamed

by Edie Harris

  “My job is to make you suffer.” Leaning over her, he brought his face close, too close. His nose brushed hers in a cruel joke of intimacy. “And in so suffering, you will tell the gentleman behind the camera—” he pointed to the upper corner of the room, where a small camera with a blinking red light had been mounted, “—anything he wants to know.”

  She swallowed around the knot lodged in her throat. “Who is he?”

  Nash shifted slightly, lips brushing her ear as he whispered, “That is something you don’t want to know, I promise you.”

  Giving in to the full-body shudder when he straightened, Beth decided she believed him. She didn’t want to know who orchestrated her kidnapping, who wanted information from her...who would allow her to be tortured by dead-eyed Nash. Because if it was someone she knew—if it was someone she had trusted enough to let into her heart, like...like Gavin—Beth would break. “I have nothing to say.”

  “Not yet. But you will.” He lifted a pressure injector from the cart, tapping the needle once, twice.

  The needle slid into her arm. “Truth serum?” she scoffed with forced bravado, ignoring the pinch of the needle’s puncture. “How very fucking Bond villain of you.”

  “No need for sodium pentothal.” Nash tsked and shook his head as a faint chill invaded her veins from the injection site. “This is simply adrenaline to counteract the sedative I gave you earlier. We need you good and awake for this.” His soulless eyes bored into her. “After all, pain is the best truth serum on the market. I’ve found that people will tell you anything, if you hurt them enough.” Gaze never wavering, he tugged up his shirtsleeves, like a doctor prepping for surgery. “Unfortunately for you, little girl, I’m very, very good at pain.”

  Her breath caught, stuttered. “Another one of your t-talents?”

  He slid warm fingers beneath hers, gripping gently, and began to stroke his thumb back and forth over her knuckles. “My best talent, as a matter of fact.”

  “Don’t do this.” Her lip trembled as she fought the tears, desperate not to show him the true depth of her terror. There was no preparing for this moment, no training ingrained deeply enough to protect her. Fear, hopelessness—both stole her courage, instantly turning her into a shadow of the strong woman she had always believed herself to be. “Please. Please don’t. There will be c-consequences if you hurt m-me.” She was sobbing now, unable to control her reaction to the monster who held her hand.

  Nash sighed sadly. “He’s not coming for you, Beth.”

  When he snapped the bones in her littlest finger, she screamed Vick’s name.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The effects of the paralytic had worn off after fifteen minutes, but Vick remained numb to his core until he burst into the office suite in the Gherkin, half an hour after he’d watched a masked John Nash haul Beth, limp and unconscious, to a paneled van parked at the end of the lane. Unable to speak, much less move, he had been forced to helplessly witness her abduction, and now?

  Now he was bloody well pissed, and heads were going to fucking roll. “You,” he growled, pointing at Chandler McCallister, who paled considerably as she watched his approach. “Tell me where she is.”

  Both hands raised, she hustled backward. “I don’t—”

  “Tell me where she is right now!” he roared, catching her by the throat. Squeezing. Red covered his vision, and he shook McCallister like a rag doll, vaguely aware of hands—too many to belong to her alone—trying to pull him off her. “You were his partner undercover in Russia. You know where he took her, and you’re going to tell me, or I swear to fucking God I will end you in the next five seconds.” A muscled forearm looped around his neck from behind, cutting off his flow of oxygen, but still he wouldn’t release his grip on McCallister.

  The bitch knew where Nash had taken Beth. She had to, had to, or...or....

  Or he would never find Beth in time.

  Nash was one of those wild-animal spies, tame enough to follow orders, but eventually natural instinct took over and you’d find ravaged bits and pieces of those orders he was meant to follow scattered on the ground in front of him. Leash cut, there was no telling what Nash would do when he permitted his particular inclinations to run free.

  Actually, there was telling what he’d do—Vick had seen the results of Nash’s inclinations first-hand on more than one occasion in the field, and it was enough to convince him that Beth wouldn’t survive long in that man’s custody.

  He managed another bruising shake as Casey’s arm tightened over his windpipe. When the lack of air started getting to him, he permitted Casey to pull him away, leaving both Vick and McCallister bent over and gasping. “Beth,” he wheezed, glancing up at the oldest Faraday sibling. “Nash took her. And she—” he jabbed an accusing finger at McCallister, “—knows where he went.”

  McCallister’s blond hair shielded her face as she stared at the ground, hands on knees. “You’re a bloody psycho, you are,” she rasped, the damage to her vocal cords evident in every syllable. “I’m not telling you shit.”

  “What’s going on?” Tobias demanded, stepping between them. “You say Beth was taken. When? From where?”

  “Half an hour ago, from Hyde Park.” Vick gulped in air as he straightened, and damn, it was difficult to give this report without letting panic seep into his voice. “Beth and I took a taxi to the Gate and entered the park, stopping at a bench approximately fifty meters down the main path. When she turned away, Nash came up behind me and injected me with a temporary paralytic.” He rubbed the aching puncture wound on the side of his neck with an absent palm. “I couldn’t move or speak, but he didn’t get the drop on her. He was...taunting her.” The memory of Nash’s lilting nursery rhyme lifted the hair on Vick’s arms. “She wounded his chest with the heel of her shoe, put him on his back and got in two right hooks to his jaw before he stuck her with a knockout drug of some kind. As soon as she was unconscious, he carried her to a paneled van.”

  “License number?” Casey asked, fury vibrant in his bitten-off words.

  “Too dark, and I couldn’t turn my head to see. All I know is it was white, and the rear left taillight was yellow instead of red.”

  Tobias nodded, his phone already whipped out of his pocket, thumbs tapping madly. “We can work with that.”

  But Yang was frowning in confusion. “He won’t hurt her. He’ll deliver to her to Polnoch’ Pulya, correct? So we’ll get a team in the air and implement a rescue in Moscow. There’s no reason to lose our heads.”

  “You don’t understand,” Vick snapped, struggling to contain his fear. The woman he loved, the woman who loved him...she was in danger, and he had no idea where to start looking for her. “If he weren’t a spy, John Nash would be a killer, or at the very least a serial abuser. He was recruited before his sadism fully manifested, but MI6 gave him all the tools and training necessary to become a modern-day Ripper. He’d as soon vivisect a woman as kiss her.”

  “No,” Yang protested faintly, her fair skin now white as a sheet. “No, he wouldn’t.”

  A positively evil chuckle escaped McCallister, scratchy and raw. “Oh, but he would. Our time in Russia was...illuminating, believe me.”

  “Enough!” Vick swung his outstretched arms through the air, silencing the room at large. “Enough. I have one priority, and that priority is Beth. McCallister was embedded with him in Moscow, and there’s no chance in hell she didn’t know what he was up to here. If we can’t track Nash through CCTV or the GPS on his mobile, she’s our best chance at finding him.” And Beth. Finding Beth.

  Casey quickly shifted from Vick’s back to McCallister’s, manacling her wrists in one capable hand while the other rested on her shoulder, a heavy restraint. “She knows where Beth is, she’s coming with us.”

  “If I know where your precious Beth is,” McCallister spat. “That’s the million-doll
ar question, right?” Hair tangled around her face, cheeks red, she bared her teeth at them. “I was in Moscow. I was with Nash. For nine months, I solidified my cover by smuggling weapons over borders and interrogating prisoners under the watchful eye of the corrupt FSB. And yes, when we came under fire with the new Polnoch’ Pulya leadership, I agreed when Nash said we should play up the suspicious circumstances surrounding Kedrov’s death to divert the attention from us, but he was the one who pointed the finger at Beth Faraday. Said it was a convenient, two-birds-one-stone deal—you could nab the Faraday Industries partnership, and we give the Russians a new target. I’ll confess to lying about their demand for her head, but Nash didn’t see how we could get access to her with Vick playing fucking guard dog twenty-four seven.” She tugged against Casey’s hold, to no avail. “I followed Nash’s lead on this. It’s not my fault he veered off course.” Her voice dropped. “They turn agents easier than any organization I’ve ever seen. Money, sex, weapons and power. Freedom. You hold steak in front of a starving dog, and what do you expect? The temptation is...incredible.”

  “I won’t protect a traitor,” Yang stated coldly. “And you’ve all but admitted to being a double agent.”

  “Of course I’m a double agent—you embedded me in Moscow’s fucking Midnight Bullet arms ring to be precisely that!” McCallister’s body shook with barely repressed rage. “Me and Nash, Colleen. You sent us in to discover whether Polnoch’ Pulya still had any sympathetic ties to Britain after Kedrov’s death in Afghanistan. That kind of thing doesn’t happen overnight, and it bloody well doesn’t happen at all unless you cross a few lines. It’s what I was trained to do—what you trained me to do—and now you’re telling me I’m a traitor?”

  “Chandler.”

  At the sound of her first name, McAllister stared at a resigned Yang, wild-eyed and white-lipped. “Don’t do this. I knew he had something on you, but I swear I don’t know what it was. I wasn’t a part of that.” Struggling as Casey bound her wrists with zip-ties acquired from Freya, McCallister pleaded with the section chief. “Don’t disavow me. I’m an asset, Colleen. An asset!”

  “Then you’ll be an asset to Faraday.” Yang looked to Tobias. “Consider this a gesture of our goodwill, and an apology for the inconvenience we’ve caused you.”

  “The kidnapping of my sister by a rogue agent with a penchant for physical torture is not an inconvenience—it’s a consequence.” Tobias nodded to Casey, who produced a gag for a shouting, squirming McCallister before urging their new prisoner toward the office doors. “Consequences multiply, Yang. Like rabbits. Beth is injured? Consequence. Beth is tortured? Consequence. Beth dies?” He paused for effect, though Vick could see the strain in the man’s stern countenance. “I’d suggest you direct your considerable resources toward locating John Nash. Should you find him before we do—”

  “We’ll contact you immediately,” Yang hurriedly assured him.

  Apparently finished, Tobias turned on his wing-tipped heel and strode after his brother and McCallister, but Vick couldn’t let them leave without him. If they did, they sure as hell wouldn’t deign to tell him if—no, when—they recovered Beth. “Wait. Tobias, wait.”

  Tobias didn’t wait.

  Yang cleared her throat. “Raleigh.”

  “The text you received from me earlier this week?” he called angrily over his shoulder as he dashed after Tobias. “Consider that ‘fuck you’ my official resignation. I’m done.”

  He barely made it to the elevator in time, stepping into the car alongside a silent Tobias. “I—”

  Without telegraphing his move at all, Tobias lunged. Shoved up against the elevator wall, with the second Faraday forearm of the day jammed into his windpipe, Vick stared into the seething attorney’s flushed face. “You. You don’t get to speak. Not one word until I’ve said my piece.” Another aggressive jostle. “How low an opinion you must have of us Faradays, to think an idiot scheme like your boss’s would work. And to take part while lying to our faces—lying to Beth? I can’t begin to comprehend the level of stupidity at which you have operated over the last few days.” The pressure on Vick’s throat eased somewhat, but he didn’t dare interrupt Tobias’s rant. “Good God, Vick, look at the mess you’ve made. Beth, our Beth, your Beth, is in the hands of a sadistic madman who played MI6 and T-16 like a fiddle with the help of that satanic little blonde. So tell me—what the hell are you going to do about it?”

  When Tobias stepped back, Vick straightened, exhaling slowly. “I’m going to tear the world apart.” For Beth. Their Beth. His Beth.

  Buttoning his suit jacket with one hand while the other carefully adjusted his tie, Tobias nodded. “And I’m going to help you do it.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Three days later...maybe four

  She woke with tears streaming down her face, tracking through the dried blood, the moisture causing faint cracks to form across her cheeks. Her brain felt blurry, her visions fuzzy.

  No, wait. Other way around. Fuzzy brain, blurry vision. There we go.

  Her arms lay heavy at her sides, bare but weighted down, restraints strapped across her wrists. She tested her legs—also feeling rather like cement blocks—and discovered straps over her ankles too. Her back was on fire, and the hollow behind her left ear burned. When she licked her lips with a tongue too dry to wet them and tasted copper, reality hit her like a sledgehammer.

  Kidnapped. Tortured. Utterly alone.

  Oh, dear God, she was actually normal for once.

  This was the worst. She was helpless and weak, terrified and confused, and trapped as much by her own shortcomings as she was by her captor. Why the hell had she ever wanted to be normal?

  Much to her dismay, her sluggish mind conjured Vick’s face, frozen on the park bench. The image shifted to one of him beneath her in the hotel bed, his head thrown back in ecstasy, acute pleasure written across his perfect features. Another memory, this one of a time before Chicago—in the Serbian village when he’d thrown himself atop her to protect her from the rubble of an exploding building. His bleeding face, a different one than the face she now associated with him, lowering to kiss her for the first time. Their first kiss, her first kiss.

  She vaguely remembered yelling at him afterward, laying the blame for the deaths of Serbian innocents at his feet. If he’d only done his job in time, she’d shouted, they would be alive yet today.

  What a hypocrite she was. The same issue—to remove a human target sooner rather than later—was precisely what had ended her in Kabul. She had waited to take the shot, permitting a suicide bomber to climb three floors before detonating, and children had died because of that. Because of her.

  And yet...not because of her. Rawad al-Fariq had arrived in Kabul already strapped to explosives; his death had been set in stone long before he’d stepped foot in that building. Those girls...they were always going to be rounding that corner on their route to school, their classroom located in the building next door.

  The building next door. She frowned, tugging futilely at her restraints as her mind fought to clear. She...hadn’t known that before. Why did she know it now?

  Her body reacted to the whoosh of the opening door before her ears so much as registered the sound. Bile rose in her throat, and, blind with terror, she began to thrash on the surgical table in a pitiful attempt at escape, her psyche immediately retreating to safety behind a secure wall of instinct and knowledge. The separation of mind and body left her little more than a feral creature caged by leather and metal and him.

  It was him, him, him—the monster who sang to her as he inflicted his personal brand of pain. But it wasn’t only John. His name was John, he’d told her that at the beginning, but someone else was watching. Someone else...

  He hummed as he lifted plastic to her lips. A water bottle, and she gulped the cool liquid greedily, letting it trickle down her throat
and bring its own form of sanity. Clarity.

  A final swallow and she jerked her head to the side, unable to tolerate anymore. It had been days since she’d last eaten, and the amount of water he had rationed to her barely kept her organs functioning. Already, her stomach cramped, wanting to reject the precious offering, but she willed her body to keep it down. She needed the minute strength it offered.

  “Look at me. Beth, look at me.” Fingers on her chin, turning her face toward him, and she squinted hazily up at his bland face, haloed in the overhead fluorescents. “There you are. Ready to talk again?”

  She whimpered, fear lunging to the forefront, but she would conserve her energy. She would not fight him, not this time.

  He shushed her before running a hand over her head. Her scalp prickled at the feel of his palm over bared skin. Oh. Ohhh, no no no. He’d shaved her hair. How...how could she have forgotten that?

  But she hadn’t forgotten, only repressed. He’d been a diligent torturer, working nearly round the clock, and so much, so very much could be done to a body in a matter of hours. Days, really, though Beth had floated in and out of consciousness too often to keep proper track, but somewhere in there, he had stolen her hair with shears and clippers, and it didn’t matter that she still wore her bra and underwear from her capture—she was naked before him, and the violation shook her to the marrow of her many broken bones.

  Nash had started with the fingers of her gun hand. Punishment for past crimes, you dangerous little thing, you.

  Then came ribs, alternating on opposite sides of her body. The first two he’d merely bruised, applying incredible pressure but never breaking. When she had refused to reveal the identity of the Faraday operative embedded in Polnoch’ Pulya—Gavin, Gavin, no not Gavin, never Gavin, don’t say Gavin—Nash decided to crack one.

  “We know your family has a mole in our ranks. It cost the man in the camera a great deal of money with our colleagues in Medellín recently.”