Hard Target

by Tibby Armstrong

  The slam of the door and ensuing silence kicked over her remaining stores of panic. Alex shot off the bed and raced out of the apartment. Already a half block away, strides long and angry, Simon walked with his head down and his hands jammed in his pockets. When a black sedan rolled up behind him, Alex yelled after him. Looking toward her, he noticed the car. With a gaze so cold it tinged her skin with frostbite across the distance, he yanked open the car door and got inside.

  The sedan tires barely paused long enough for Simon to gain admittance before the car sped off again. Expecting to find Gibbons inside, Simon frowned in bemusement to have the rear compartment to himself. Automatic locks thumped inside the doors.

  “Where are we going?” he asked the driver.

  The man cracked a neck as wide as his shoulders, but didn’t so much as glance in the rearview mirror.

  “All right then,” Simon muttered and settled himself into the seat.

  Wherever they headed, he hoped he found Max Gibbons at the end of the road because he had a few items to rearrange on the man’s face before he got down to the business of telling him exactly how he intended to string him up if he ever dared threaten his sister again. Implicitly or explicitly.

  Getting his bearings, knowing he needed an escape plan should the man in the front decide to pull a gun and try to dump him in the East River, Simon forced himself to put Gibbons…and Alex…out of his mind.

  The thickness of the window glass as well as the quality of the tint said it was security glass. Bulletproof. The seat behind him didn’t appear to open to the trunk. If he managed to get to the front seat, however, and jam the vehicle into reverse he might buy time to kick open the passenger door and escape.

  Knowing better than to leave any avenue unexplored, he took in the floor where a supermarket bag lay. Max never gave presents. This couldn’t be good. Feeling more contrary than normal, he ignored the bag. After six blocks and two red lights, the driver finally glanced in the mirror. Simon raised his brows.

  “Open it.” The baritone command vibrated Simon’s chest wall from four feet away.

  “Steroids are illegal you know.”

  The man’s already squinty eyes narrowed until there was almost nothing left. “So’s murder. Hasn’t stopped me yet.”

  Not bothering to dignify the threat with a response, Simon took his glasses from his pocket and slid them on. Opening the e-reader app on his phone, he figured he might be able to get in fifty or sixty pages before they reached wherever they were going.

  “Open it,” the man said again when they’d become ensnared in a hopeless tangle of traffic.

  Still reading, Simon asked, “Why?”

  Not many sounds were as distinctive and instantaneously attention riveting as a slide racking on a gun. Simon froze, index finger hovering over his screen as he stared down the barrel of Alex’s Bureau-issued firearm.

  “Open it.”

  Finding himself suddenly very curious as to the contents, Simon leaned forward slowly and lifted the featherlight bag between his thumb and index finger. Brown paper crinkled as he widened the top. “This better not contain someone’s body part, or we’re going to have words.”

  The gun remained pointed at his head.

  He glanced inside the bag and saw…three white envelopes? Meeting the driver’s beady expression he wondered if it might be possible for the man to miss at such close range. No. Odds were definitely in the goon’s favor. Simon withdrew the envelopes.

  In bold, black marker on the front of each were the words DO NOT OPEN.

  “What am I supposed to do instead? Eat them?” he asked, wondering if he’d fallen into a Manhattan gangster version of Alice in Wonderland.

  “Turn them over. Then pick one to take with you.”

  Knowing the information was a veritable soliloquy for this guy, Simon flipped the first envelope. It read, WITH ME. Traffic began to move again. His escort put the gun away and returned his attention to the road. The second envelope read, AGAINST ME, and the third, UNDECIDED. Well it was nice of them to give him three choices, he supposed, even knowing he really had no choice at all. This wasn’t Gibbons’ style, which meant the car and driver headed toward a meeting with Downing. Since he wanted to leave the party in something other than a body bag, he saw the WITH ME envelope as his best chance for survival.

  The driver pulled the car up to a high-rise on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The initials JD covered the space above the entryway to eight stories up. If Simon hadn’t already figured out where he headed, he might’ve welcomed the clue. As it was, the personal monogram struck him as beyond arrogant and past ridiculous. Alex would’ve agreed. Dark eyes laughing at him, mouth set in a serious line, she’d have made an acerbic comment that prompted his wit. At one time, the exchange would’ve left them both laughing until they couldn’t breathe.

  Stepping into the building’s black marble lobby, Simon pushed thoughts of Alex aside in favor of dealing with the immediate crisis. He still didn’t know what he’d say to Downing. Or if anything might convince the man of a loyalty Simon didn’t actually feel. In these types of situations he usually found he thought better on his feet. He focused on the details of his surroundings. The lobby rose six stories, palatial enough to contain a full waterfall. Its gushing torrents cascaded down a black marble slab to land in a gold-lined pool. An attendant greeted him from behind the polished sweep of an identical marble counter. “Mr. Downing is expecting you. Jessica will accompany you upstairs.”

  A woman arrived wearing gold-tipped heels and a red dress. She so resembled a stereotype from a spy film that Simon had to bite down on the urge to ask her if she had pussy galore.

  “Right this way, Dr. Jakes,” she said.

  Simon noted she wore a gold collar secured with a little JD. He wondered if the deep-seated need to label everything within his circle of control came from a childhood marred by a mother with a Sharpie fetish.

  “Did he brand you too?” Simon asked.

  The woman’s gold nails paused over the security pin pad in the elevator. She blinked at him from door’s mirrored surface. “Sorry?”

  “A brand. You’re his property, right?”

  Jessica flushed, not with mortification, but with pride. “Yes. I’m his. But he hasn’t branded me. Yet.”

  Simon leaned against the rear wall and memorized the security code the woman finished entering. Twenty digits were generally his limit. This code had twelve. Piece of cake.

  The car skyrocketed toward the seventieth floor and, Simon assumed, the penthouse. When they swished open, he and his escort stepped into a long hallway branching both to the right and straight ahead. Oriental carpeting cushioned their footfalls as they went straight. He caught a glimpse of a study to the right. Third door down. Large tapestry on the wall. Probably concealed a safe. Another elevator to his left, just outside an industrial kitchen. For service staff?

  What an odd layout for a penthouse. “Where are we?”

  The woman paused outside a door more ornate than the rest. “Mr. Downing’s private offices.”

  Surprised she’d answered, he tried pumping her for more information. “Thanks. I thought we were meeting at his penthouse.”

  “Oh no. I don’t have the code for his private quarters.” Jessica tugged her bottom lip between her teeth before confiding in hushed tones, “Though I’m allowed upstairs when summoned.”

  So, Downing’s condo was upstairs? Simon bit his tongue to keep from calling her the best security leak he’d ever met. “How does he summon you?”

  The woman jumped as if shocked and put a hand to her neck. “Like that.”

  She pushed open the double doors. A room with a mahogany conference table likely as long as Downing’s impression of his own physical endowments stretched from the door to a bank of windows. Simon could see his own building across Central Park glinting in the sunlight. A beacon. He wanted to go home. Read. Sleep. Eat rat poison. Anything but be here with the megalomaniac standing in front of hi
m. If the cut and material of John Downing’s suit failed to convey his status and power, then the grape-sized diamond-and-platinum cufflinks did the trick. Nobody would mistake this man’s worth. Or his Napoleon complex. For a long minute Simon stood motionless, staring at his host from across the room.

  “Dr. Jakes, welcome.” Downing held out a hand.

  Simon somehow crossed the distance between them and performed the required social niceties without punching the guy in the face.

  “Excuse Jessica. She’s still in training.” Downing caressed Jessica’s naked arm, as if in possession. Neck craned, she peered adoringly into her master’s pale-blue eyes. Sensual lips and waves of thick, blond hair should have marked the man as handsome, but even impeccably cut hair and a nose too perfect to be natural couldn’t disguise the dank evil that had overtaken this man’s soul.

  Downing smiled softly at Jessica, then cupped her cheek with one hand and backhanded her with the other. Simon automatically went for a weapon he didn’t have. Jessica stumbled from the room.

  Straightening his cuffs, Downing caught Simon’s lip curl. “At least I didn’t make her perform for you.”

  Without invitation, Simon sat at the end of the long table, putting distance between himself and Downing. Downing, in turn, went to a glass sideboard and poured himself a brandy.

  “I would’ve bet on bourbon,” Simon said.

  Downing’s long fingers, carefully manicured, curled a little tighter around the glass. “I never took you for a betting man.”

  “Well, I’m betting right now that one of your boys has a gun pointed at me through that two-way mirror.” Time to unmask the villain. If he were lucky he’d get a Scooby Snack when this was over.

  “There’s a difference between betting and common sense.” Downing took a sip of the amber-gold liquid. “And up until today, I credited you with an abundance of the latter.”

  Shit. This was definitely about Alex being a fed. Going for blasé, Simon managed only blank. “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “It seems I made a little wager of my own…and almost lost. I don’t like losing.” Downing waved one hand negligently toward him. “Tell me, Dr. Jakes. Which envelope did you bring with you?”

  Simon glanced to two white envelopes at the opposite end of the table. “Considering you have the other two, I think you know.”

  “So you’re with me?” Dying embers of sunlight winked over Downing’s cufflinks, sending shards of red light skittering across the room.

  “I’d be a fool not to be.” Simon hated stating the obvious, but he did so anyway.

  Downing settled himself into the leather conference chair nearest Simon’s. “Then why don’t you open the envelope?”

  He pulled the folded square of the envelope he’d chosen from his back pocket. The sound of tearing paper accompanied the cut of the fibers through Simon’s index finger. He ignored the pain and slid a card from the envelope. Blood dripped onto the surface.

  Provide me intelligence on security surrounding the July 29th presidential awards gala at Carnegie Hall.

  Well, that was easy enough. Though it meant he’d have to continue to work for the FBI…with Alex. Shit.

  “How will you know I’m not lying?” Simon let his tongue get ahead of him.

  “Because then you’d be against me.” One side of Downing’s face managed a smile. “And you didn’t choose that option. Did you?”

  Simon kept his poker face, but barely. He’d always been shit at undercover ops. Even the CIA knew it and had chosen to use him instead for hacking most of the time. The few times he’d fired a gun outside of training had been at a particularly stubborn deadbolt or a swarm of rats in a sewer he’d crawled through.

  “Tell you what. Why don’t you read this one?” Downing rose from his chair and slid the AGAINST ME envelope across the tabletop. “I’m prepared to be generous and let you change your mind.”

  Following Downing’s track across the room to the bank of windows, Simon tore open the second envelope. What fell out made red smear his vision. Somehow, when that red cleared, he found himself on the carpet with the heel of a boot on his windpipe. A gun pointed at his head.

  The guard. Where the hell had he come from?

  Downing stared down at Simon and tsk-tsked. “Never fight when you’re angry. You know better than that.”

  “Leave my sister alone.” Simon ignored the pressure on his throat.

  The photo that had fallen from the envelope showed his sister with a male nurse holding a garrote just outside her vision. More little girl than woman, his sister’s mental faculties had regressed to that of a two-year-old after the accident. All innocence and vulnerability, she’d stared up at him from the picture. He hadn’t seen her in years only because whenever he left her she went into a fit so intense, the exertion put her in danger of an aneurism. Seeing her now, like this. So vulnerable. It made his head spin and his guts turn to molten ore.

  “There’s no reason to be upset, Dr. Jakes.” Italian leather flashed in Simon’s peripheral vision as Downing paced by him. “But why don’t you take a peek at the third envelope while you’re still down there. Just in case you have another unfortunate lapse in manners?”

  The envelope landed on his chest. Rough carpet fibers abraded Simon’s palms as he clenched his hands into fists.

  “Just so we understand one another,” Downing prompted. “Go on. Read it.”

  Simon tore the envelope open, careless of the contents. Pieces of a love letter he’d written to Alex, stolen from her apartment, some bamboo shoots and electrical wire fell out. Simon breathed deep as he vowed, when this was all over, to kill the man standing before him. Drawing a mantle of icy calm around himself, Simon met Downing’s considering stare once more. Three more seconds and he’d upend the bastard standing on his throat and give the game away entirely. “Are we done here?”

  “You have until tomorrow evening, nine p.m., to get me the information.” Downing grinned fully now, thinking he’d won. “And you have my permission to play double agent. I know the FBI is like hot wax. Once stuck to your skin they don’t come off without a little pain.”

  “Clever.” Simon sat up. He cleared his throat and took in the glittering New York City skyline. “And unfortunately very true.”

  “We have a deal?” Downing asked.

  “Yes,” Simon answered, no room for humor remaining amidst his hatred. “We have a deal.”

  Chapter Seven

  “What have I done?” Alex dropped her head into her hands.

  Red LED blinking like an accusatory beacon, Simon’s old laptop rested on her desk, charging. How she’d stolen it from the evidence room didn’t matter as much as the deed itself. She could return it before anyone found out, but she doubted Gary Tilson would thank her for letting him know his car alarm had gone off for a second time that hour. When he’d asked her to man his post she’d said yes, then proceeded to plunder the boxes from Simon’s arrest.

  Since the information he’d allegedly stolen happened to be from the FBI databases, the Bureau had claimed ownership of the evidence after Simon’s trial. Though the CIA had argued long and loud, the Justice Department ultimately assigned custody of the evidence to the FBI. Alex peeked between her fingers at the hotly contested piece of equipment. No doubt it’d send a signal to the CIA the second she booted the drive, despite the fact it was Simon’s personal device. She knew only one person who had a prayer at safely accessing its contents.

  Fuck it. She should return it. Meaning to do just that, she stood.

  “Going home?” Ryan asked from her doorway.

  “Um—” To conceal the electronics, Alex slipped the laptop into her bag. “Yeah. I thought maybe I could…you know…catch up on some things.”

  Ryan’s gaze narrowed. “You don’t use a laptop.”

  “It’s my personal one.” The lie rushed out so quickly Alex didn’t have time to consider its ramifications. It was strictly against regulations to use personal devices for classifie
d work.

  Stepping across her threshold, Ryan closed her door behind him and leaned against it. “Where’s Jakes?”

  “I— We had an argument. Okay. Two days of arguments.” Alex cleared her throat and shuffled papers on her desk. “He needed some air and I let him go.”

  “Are you crazy?” Ryan pushed away from the door. “What if the AD finds out you left him unattended?”

  “Does it really matter?” Alex fell into her chair hard enough to make it screech. “If he wants to get something past me he will. He’s twice as smart as you or I. Why do you think it took me this long to nail him in the first place?”

  Ryan smirked. “Nail him?”

  “You know very well what I meant.” Alex flushed.

  Ryan refused to wipe the knowing expression from his face.

  She pressed her fists to her temples. “I can’t do it, Ryan. I can’t work with him.”

  A long exhale preceded Ryan’s approach. Hands jammed in his pockets, he studied her with concern.

  “You’ve worked too hard for this, Allie. You can’t let him win now.”

  The use of his nickname for her kicked at her conscience, churning up a different kind of guilt. He counted on her. Trusted her. They’d seen action together and worked hard on this case. If she went down, he’d likely suffer with her. She couldn’t fail. She couldn’t quit. Maybe if she mentioned her cover had been blown they’d have reason to take her off the case? The thought of never seeing Simon again reared, blotting out any hope of finding internal equilibrium. Alex ran both hands over her face, smearing her makeup, she knew. “Goddamn it. I’m still in love with the bastard.”

  Slowly, carefully, Ryan approached her side of the desk and perched his hip on the top. “And?”

  “It…” Alex waved her hand around. “Complicates things.”

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  Her attention riveted to Ryan’s face. He appeared…amused?

  “It’s not funny.” She sniffed and swiveled her chair away.

  “No. You’re right. If you’re stealing evidence for him it’s really not funny at all.”