SLEEPER (Crossfire Series)

by Gennita Low

  “Why don’t we just pick Greta up?”

  “Easier said than done. We don’t know where she is, for one thing,” Nikki said. “We do know since Lily failed to follow instructions, Greta’s been looking for her and the device. Keep an eye on Lily, Reed.”

  “I will. One more thing. If Greta’s the one who activated Lily’s sleeper status, and Lily was stopped from following through the last time, then she can do it again, right?”

  “Yes, and there won’t be anyone to stop Lily this time. Brad managed to get hold of her this one time and somehow got through to her.” Nikki paused. “You’re her last chance, Reed. She can’t outrun Greta and the others after her.”

  Last chance. Hadn’t those words just popped up in his head a few minutes ago? Reed bit his lower lip thoughtfully. “In all honesty, she appears to be really alone,” he told Nikki.

  “She’s always worked alone, Reed,” Amber said. She’d been very quiet throughout the conversation. “She doesn’t trust anyone. The thing about Lily is that she seldom talks about herself. It took her four years to tell me a little bit and most of it was programmed lies she’d told herself anyway.”

  “But she doesn’t lie about her need for those passports for her girls,” Reed countered, giving some details about the phone call to Tatiana.

  “Tatiana’s in charge of the girls?” Amber said, surprise in her voice. “The last time I saw her, she was still recovering from her injuries. She must be doing a lot better.”

  Injuries? “So that’s really her name? What injuries?”

  “Yes, it is. Tatiana, like all the other girls, were lured and kidnapped from their hometowns. You know that, Reed. Some of the girls were”—Amber paused, looking for the right words—“not cooperative and thus suffered more.”

  In other words, they’d had to be “broken.” Reed recalled all those girls he’d seen that night so many months ago and remembered how frightened they’d seemed. Dilaver was dead, yet, in a way, these scarred girls were still his prisoners. He wished he’d been the one to kill that bastard. If he were Lily, he’d be doing the same thing she’d planned on—getting the girls out of this place in any way possible.

  “There’s an article that just came out recently, written by reporters who had interviewed those girls face-to-face,” Amber continued. “I’ll give a copy to Nikki to pass on to you, so you can see what Lily and I were dealing with when we worked together.”

  “I would like that. They’re still Lily’s main concern and she’s trusted me to do this one favor for her,” Reed told them. “From talking to her, I get the feeling that she’s running away, not from you, Amber, or her handler, but from everyone.”

  “Is she really talking about herself to you?” Amber asked.

  Not yet, but he intended to find out more. “I’m trying to gain her confidence,” he said. Lily responded to him emotionally, he wanted to say, but that would open himself up to a lot of speculation from these two very intelligent analysts. “I think she likes me enough to talk about other things besides the girls.”

  He managed to keep the tone of his voice businesslike, but he knew there was very little that could be kept secret from field operatives who made a living inserting themselves into different lives. Inexperienced as he was at this type of covert work, even he would have drawn certain conclusions about the situation. At it was, he was grateful to the women for not bringing up the obvious. He didn’t want to analyze his own feelings about what was happening.

  “If you can find out whether she knows, really knows, what has happened to her, and if we can figure out what sets her off, then we have a way to save her. Otherwise, once we have the weapon in our hands and without any threat of her using it, we’ll bring her in and work on her. If she doesn’t put up a fight, that is. Sleeper cells usually have instructions for suicide, Reed. I’m sorry.”

  Reed definitely didn’t like that idea. But he also knew he couldn’t let Lily go. She was, whether she knew it or not, a dangerous weapon for someone to use.

  “Why do you think Greta wanted Lily dead?” he asked.

  “From talking to Johnny, we think Greta was led to believe that Lily was meeting you to sell the weapon. The shot in the club was meant for you. They wanted to isolate Lily with what they thought was the device in her bag.”

  She’d saved him. “But it doesn’t make sense. Why did they try to run her over then? Because the car was definitely veering in her direction when we were apart.”

  Lily had pushed him out of the way, telling him to run, assuming correctly that she’d been the target. But he had been the first target. If he’d been killed, she would have drowned in the river…. Providence. It seemed that their lives were linked together.

  “We can only conjecture about that, Reed,” Nikki said. “Perhaps someone panicked when they saw you were with Lily. Perhaps they thought you were the one who killed the man in the alley. Right now, not enough information. Hopefully T will get some answers for us.”

  “How long will it take T to find out more about Greta?” The faster they took down that double agent, the better. One less threat to Lily. “Greta sounds as if she’s trying to get her hands on the device to use it again.”

  “Yes,” Amber said, “I’ve been checking with my sources, and it doesn’t look like she wants to sell it. There’s only some market talk about a special weapon that was hidden in some cache in Dilaver’s control. Not a peep about anyone selling it. That’s good news too because that means Lily’s not doing that either. By the way, T isn’t back yet, but she did send a message to pass to you.”

  “What’s that?” He wondered where the GEM chief was. How did one go about tracing a missing mole like Greta?

  “She says if you draw a sheep, remember to add a muzzle.”

  Reed went very still. A reference from his favorite book. The sheep in The Little Prince was meant to help, but it also posed a threat to the flower, since sheep ate plants. That woman had an uncanny knack of reading people’s minds. She was trying to warn him against giving Lily too much help, especially when he didn’t know how dangerous she could be. He tried to think of a smart rebuttal.

  “I assume you know what she’s talking about,” Nikki said when he didn’t reply immediately. “T has a way of saying the most puzzling things.”

  “Yes. You don’t sound puzzled. Does she always pop a bullet into you when you aren’t looking?” he asked.

  “You’re the trained sniper, Reed,” Nikki said. “T does the same thing, except she shoots at invisible mental blocks. Use your own experience to understand her. She’s just making you aware of something, that’s all.”

  Maybe that was why she was the leader of GEM. He’d heard she was very talented at maneuvering people. One would think those under her would resent a person like that. But he’d liked working with T. He found her outrageous flair for drama and enjoyment of attention appealing.

  “In that case,” he said, “speaking from a sniper’s point of view, please tell her when you talk to her again that her timing’s excellent.”

  “Now that compliment will definitely please her,” Nikki said with a small laugh. “T loves it when she hits a bull’s-eye. Tell me the weapons you think you’re going to need. I’ll see you soon.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Lily looked up. The faint sound of the cell phone’s beeps called at her. She turned back to the open drawer, methodically lifting anything that could hide a few thin passports.

  The phone stopped, then immediately started again. She gritted her teeth, then walked quickly back into the living room, where she’d left the stupid thing. She looked at it as it merrily trilled at her. It was a compact, weighing a few ounces, yet it’d felt like a hundred-pound albatross when she was holding it.

  It’s just Reed. Answer it. She couldn’t. She hadn’t been affected by wild mood swings since she’d stopped using one, so there must be some sort of connection. She hadn’t been paranoid when she’d felt she was being followed. Someone had tried to kil
l her last night, so that was proof that she wasn’t going mental.

  The ringing stopped. Lily remained tense for a minute, expecting it to start again, to go through the whole process of arguing with herself. It stayed quiet.

  She sighed. Never had she felt so cut off from the world. She’d thought she was a pretty fearless person, but this new…phobia…was destroying her freedom. She couldn’t check on the girls, for heaven’s sake. Couldn’t make the usual calls to get hold of her contacts. Couldn’t make bank transfers or any number of chores that an ordinary person could do.

  Sooner or later, she would have to face the demons, but she dared not chance it while the girls still depended on her. Once she’d gotten them to safety, she would sit down and deal with what was left of her life.

  Lily snorted in self-disgust as she turned and walked back to the room where she’d been conducting a careful search. That shouldn’t take too much time. There weren’t that many options in her future. She couldn’t live a normal life in the future if she couldn’t pick up a phone.

  “Not that I know what a normal life is!” she said out loud. She looked at the expensive furniture and equipment in the “media” room, as she called it, and waved her arm dramatically to declare, “This isn’t normal.”

  In the space of twenty-four hours, she’d danced the tango, been chased by a car, been shot at, jumped off a two-story bridge and almost drowned in icy water, been stripped naked after she’d passed out and been bathed by a stranger—a sexy, equally naked stranger—and sort of imprisoned in some kind of luxury suite. Not to mention—Lily could feel the wave of heat warming her cheeks—being treated as if she were a kept woman. She didn’t even know the man! She touched her face. What had possessed her to let him do all those things to her?

  Kept woman. He might as well have imprisoned her, even though he’d given her a cell phone and the codes to the elevator. She couldn’t call anyone for help. She couldn’t walk out of here without any clothes. Well, she could—but without even a vehicle, how long would she last in the cold weather? She laughed at the ludicrous image.

  What would Amber say if she knew what had happened to her? She’d crack up at her right now, standing barefoot on thick carpet with nothing but a T-shirt on, with all her other clothes destroyed in a bathroom. Amber would be laughing her ass off at the idea of her relying on a man who might or might not come back with clothes, who seemed to be able to take them off her without any trouble, who had a way of kissing her and making her…

  A half-hysterical chuckle caught in Lily’s throat. “Oh, Amber,” she muttered, “you’ll be calling me a Wretched Wench.”

  The name was a mocking name, with an accompanying Wretched Wench List, which Amber and she had made up one night when they had gone out drinking during happier days. A Wretched Wench was a desperate woman who would let a man do anything to her because he could get her all horny. Oh, how they had giggled over that.

  And then Amber had fallen hard for Hawk McMillan, and Lily had teased her about becoming a Wretched Wench. It made Lily smile, thinking about how totally in love her girlfriend had been.

  She sighed again. They must be out of the country by now. Hopefully they’d one day forgive her for her betrayal.

  She opened the next drawer and looked listlessly at its contents. Loneliness was a strange thing. She had been lonely before but had never felt it so soul deep. It seemed that everything she’d built had fallen apart like a pack of cards.

  “That’s because you’re a pack of lies, girl,” she said as she pulled out another drawer. Empty. Just like now, she was trying to live a lie. She didn’t want to do this to Reed, who seemed to want to help her, but…what was one more lie? She needed his passports more. “Where would he keep them?”

  She hoped to find them in the few days that she’d be here. If she could locate the passports, there would be fewer she’d have to pay cash for. She had been mulling over the idea of an even bigger lie. Maybe she could use the stolen device she’d hidden to get more than just passports. With a good chunk of cash, she could pay off all the requisite bribes and expenses. That way, the CIA couldn’t track her through her bank accounts. Nor could they try to force her hand by freezing up all her money. It was a tempting idea.

  She wasn’t planning on selling the weapon, of course, but if she could get Reed to set up a sale through Johnny Chic, all she needed was a big lie to carry off a fake device. She carefully pushed the last drawer closed. Once again she would be betraying a person helping her and her girls out.

  “Sorry, Reed,” she murmured. She wished there were some other way. He was a gunrunner; he’d sell the real device without care of the consequences. “I can’t have this bomb thing in anyone’s hands. I guess when they programmed me, they forgot to take away my morals.”

  She heard the ping of the arriving elevator. Reed. The thought of his hands and lips on her body again made her shiver. She wondered whether he’d gotten any condoms this time. She forgot another line Amber had said. Wretched Wenches had no morals. Oh dear.

  * * *

  “Damn, why did I forget the gloves?”

  Greta ran her thumb over the finger with the broken nail. She peeled the rest of the nail off and made a face at its shortened length. Her fault. She’d forgotten to bring the smaller pair of gloves that she was to use for rough work. Like climbing a stupid garden wall.

  It was a cold morning, and she’d cocooned herself in her new fur coat before boarding the train. She had enjoyed a nice breakfast and read a good book. She’d wanted to be relaxed when she arrived.

  She looked up at the brick wall, her rope hanging loosely, waiting for her. Damn it. She couldn’t climb it without getting rope burns. She was very aware that her upper body strength wasn’t what it used to be, even with working out regularly all these years. She hadn’t actually practiced endurance and wall climbing. She could sacrifice her nails and do it, of course, but she’d wanted Gunther to look at his TV and see how effortlessly she was doing it.

  She needed those gloves. They had a special sticky film sprayed on them to ease her climb. But after putting on her regular winter gloves, she’d left them on the train.

  “Stupid bitch,” she muttered.

  She wanted to make an entrance, to show Gunther what she was made of. The man didn’t have enough respect for her capabilities, and she wanted to teach him a lesson. Killing was too easy. She’d always liked a little flair in her work. She still smiled at the memory of one of her best dramatic moments: she’d ordered one of her men to lop off the long hair of her CIA boss’s wife, and she had hand-delivered the box to him herself before her escape. How she wished she’d been there to watch his face, but he would have done it in private anyway, and her time had been running out. She’d needed to disappear quickly or be caught.

  But, yes, that had been the highlight of her final days in the States. Too bad her man had fucked up. Somehow her final revenge hadn’t finished with that woman’s death. How that tiny little thing had managed to escape was a mystery to Greta, but her sources had reported the woman had escaped and her kidnapper had been killed and his body burned in a fire.

  Greta shook her head. She’d to stop gloating here. Gunther wasn’t dumb. He was probably waiting for her to show up.

  She smiled. What could be a grander entrance than to ring the doorbell? He wouldn’t kill her, not yet anyway. People were expecting her at home and her death would point to him, since he’d been assigned to assist her. No, he just wanted to put her in a bad light so he could be the next big spy.

  “Not of my stature, you won’t,” Greta murmured. He was incompetent at best. To jeopardize a whole mission just to get ahead in his standing was simply foolhardy. She was valued because she did her job to perfection. All her work was immaculate. If she said she was going to get a special explosive device, she would. If she was told to demonstrate how she could slip it undetected into a crowded, secured area with big political names in attendance, she would. She wouldn’t have dreamed
up a stupid scheme using some stupid unknown woman who had a few illegal things in her past to go there and blow herself up with all of them.

  Greta went to the front gate and rang the door chime. She stood there calmly as the electronic camera zoomed in on her.

  Granted, had Gunther succeeded, he’d have gotten extra points for ridding them of a few powerful enemies. He’d have been rewarded for that, but Greta was very sure they wouldn’t have approved of his brash disregard for the original orders. And that was why she would always be better than this new breed of operatives.

  The wrought-iron gate opened just wide enough for one person to slip inside. It closed behind her as she walked up the path toward the front door. As she approached, it opened by itself, like in some ghost movie. She stepped onto the doormat and wiped her boots with deliberate care as she looked inside.

  Hallway. Staircase. Two closed doors to the left.

  She walked into the house.

  “I’m in the back, Greta. Come on in,” someone called out. “There are no traps, I promise.”

  Greta snorted. Like she was going to believe that.

  * * *

  How was it possible to be aware of so many details about a woman just by watching her walk into the room?

  Reed gripped the shopping bags tightly. Lily’s skin glistened with droplets of water, her long legs flashing every time the flap between the two ends of the towel opened up when she took a step. She dabbed the side of her face with a smaller one.

  “Hey, it’s you,” she said.

  “Were you expecting someone, wearing that?” he asked as he went toward her. “Why didn’t you answer my call?”

  Lily shrugged. “Shower. I didn’t hear anything.”

  “I called the suite number, too,” he said. “Surely you heard the ringing.”

  “I told you I was in the shower,” she said, walking back into the bedroom and tossing the small towel onto the bed. She picked up a bottle of lotion from the nearby dresser.