Reach For the Spy

by Diane Henders

  I swallowed hard and clamped down on terror.

  “Hurry up.” Stemp’s voice was hard.

  The cubicle wavered and I realized I was hyperventilating. I leaned heavily on the bed and tried to slow my breathing. That worked for a few seconds until the swish of the cubicle curtain made me suck in a startled breath again.

  Stemp glowered at me. “Let’s go.”

  His hard hand wrapped around my arm, crushing the aching bruises, and he ushered me briskly out of the hospital and into a waiting van.

  When the van stopped at Sirius Dynamics, I was surprised. I was even more surprised when we all entered the lobby and Stemp retrieved our security fobs from the wicket. Spider was still being held, but the guard in the wicket didn’t seem to notice as the other men blocked his view.

  When Stemp approached the door to the secured facility, my heart picked up the pace yet again. The door opened and he waved us all inside. Three big armed men. Spider, Stemp and me. I was gasping for air before the door even closed.

  Crammed into the enclosed space, I grappled for control while the adrenaline surged through my system. When the door released and Stemp moved forward, I stumbled on shaking legs and would have fallen if the two men hadn’t grabbed my arms. Stemp eyed me impassively while they half-dragged, half-carried me down the stairs.

  Instead of our usual right-turn toward the labs, Stemp turned left down a concrete corridor. I managed to get my legs under me, but my captors kept a firm and painful grasp on my upper arms. Spider walked stiffly ahead of me with his escort.

  We passed several glassed-in rooms, featureless except for benches bolted to the walls. As we arrived at the last one, my distracted brain finally processed what I was seeing. Our armed guards stood aside and raised their weapons. Stemp punched a code into the keypad and the heavy tempered-glass door slid open.

  Kane and Germain stood tensely while Spider and I were shoved inside with them. The glass door slid closed, and Stemp leaned against it from the outside. He regarded us with his habitual indifferent expression. “Now we’re going to talk.”

  I don’t know how long we would have stood staring at him if Spider hadn’t collapsed to the floor.

  I fell to my knees beside him in desperate fear, but he was already sitting up, gaping at Kane as if he was seeing a ghost. Which, in his mind, he was.

  “You’re... alive...?” he whispered.

  “For now,” Kane snapped. He glowered at Stemp. “What do you want?”

  “Information.” Stemp turned his reptilian gaze on me. “We’ll start with you. Who’s your contact at Fuzzy Bunny?”

  “I don’t have a contact at Fuzzy Bunny,” I quavered. I swallowed hard, cursing my trembling and trying to steady my voice.

  “Then what were you doing at the park, setting up a fake memorial to a man you obviously knew was still alive? Getting ready to fake your abduction by Fuzzy Bunny? Who’s your contact?”

  I glared at him and stayed silent. He locked eyes with me, and neither of us moved or spoke.

  After a few seconds, he glanced over at the armed men. “Fine.” He punched the code to release the door again. “Put her in the time-delay chamber. Lock both doors.” His eyes glinted dangerously at me. “Just start screaming when you’re ready to tell me what I want to know.”

  I jerked my chin up and stiffened my knees in an attempt to hide my violent tremors.

  “No!” Spider scrambled to his feet as the men approached. “I’ll tell you.”

  “Spider, don’t.” The harsh voice that came from my throat made him twitch, but he stood his ground.

  “It doesn’t matter now,” he quavered. “It won’t make a difference anyway.” He turned to face Stemp. “We were trying to trap you. Aydan was the bait, and I was supposed to be hiding to video you when you kidnapped her. She was pretending to do a memorial...” He swallowed hard and turned an agonized face to me. “You knew he wasn’t dead. How could you...?”

  “Spider, I’m sorry!” My voice tore my aching throat. “Stemp lied to me. I really thought he was dead. I didn’t find out he wasn’t until yesterday, and...”

  “I ordered her not to tell,” Kane interrupted. “Direct order. No argument.”

  “But... Why?” Spider turned pleading eyes to Kane.

  “Stop.” Stemp’s voice cut through the conversation. “Why would I take her?”

  “Because you’ve been secretly working for Fuzzy Bunny,” Spider blurted out.

  Stemp’s poker face cracked into astonishment. “What? Are you crazy? What the hell would make you think that?”

  I took a step toward him, and the armed men jerked their weapons up and backed outside the cell. The glass door slid closed again.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Little things,” I grated. “Like kidnapping and drugging a federal agent. And faking his death.”

  “That was necessary.” Stemp’s mask was in place again. “I couldn’t afford to waste time once I realized we had a leak. I had circumstantial evidence that pointed to Kane. When he didn’t make a move at the dump site, I had to make a snap decision before he shot you. Holding him did two things. It eliminated him as a suspect, and it left you in a position where I could plausibly use you as bait again.” He eyed me. “Except you beat me to it.”

  “Do you have any idea what you did to all the people who care about him?” I snarled. I realized I’d surged toward the glass when the armed men on the other side jerked their weapons up.

  He shrugged. “It was necessary,” he repeated. He turned to Kane. “How did you escape?”

  Kane’s expressionless cop face was firmly in place, too. “You should have checked those restraints more frequently.”

  “What were you doing at the park?”

  “I’d made contact with Aydan early Tuesday morning.” A faint flush climbed his neck, and I guessed he was remembering exactly what that contact had been like. I knew I was. “She told me her plan, and I was there as backup. It would have worked if Germain hadn’t jumped me.”

  “Yes, what were you doing there?” Stemp inquired as he turned to Germain.

  Germain glowered. “Trying to protect Aydan. I thought she was out there all by herself.” He shot me a look.

  Guilt suffused me all over again. “Carl, I’m so sorry I had to lie to you...” I began.

  He shook his head. “It’s okay. You had to.”

  I swung around to face Stemp again. “So what the hell were you doing there?” I ground out.

  “Waiting to see who Fuzzy Bunny’s operative was, of course,” he replied smoothly. “When I saw your email, I couldn’t believe you’d been stupid enough to set yourself up in such a vulnerable position, but I chalked it up to you being a dumb civilian.”

  He eyed me sardonically. “Clearly, I misjudged you. Regardless, you’d solved a problem for me. I’d been trying to figure out a way to use you as bait again, and you set it up for me as neatly as could be. So I took advantage of it.” He shrugged. “I had video surveillance equipment set up, too.”

  “If you needed a trap, why didn’t you just ask me?” I demanded.

  “Would you have done it?”

  I sighed. “Of course. Well, before I found out you’d lied and kidnapped John, anyway.”

  “But what happened at the park?” Spider broke in.

  “I got there early as we’d planned, and I was just starting to pretend to set things up when I heard fighting.”

  “That was when I jumped Kane,” Germain said. “I’d never believed he was a traitor, but when I saw him alive, I thought he’d faked his own death and he was trying to abduct Aydan.”

  “And I thought you were attacking me because you were the traitor,” Kane put in. “Sorry,” he added. “I didn’t believe you’d turn, either, until you showed up there.”

  “Why were you trying to shoot Kane?” I snapped my gaze around to Stemp. “You knew he was innocent.”

  “I didn’t know that, actually,” Stemp replied dispassionately. “A message to Fuzzy Bunny
was sent the morning that you went to the dump site. No further messages were sent while I had Kane in custody. The day he escaped, another message went to Fuzzy Bunny. Then he appeared in your trap. What would you have thought in my place?”

  “So you were going to shoot me to get me out of your line of fire.”

  “Yes. I thought your judgement was... biased... when it came to Kane. I realized afterward that you had known in advance he was alive and you had expected him to be there. That changed things.”

  “So why are we in the cell and you’re outside?” Kane grated.

  “I had a contingency plan in place.” Stemp nodded to the armed men. “They brought us back here to sleep off our tranks. Too bad the tear gas got them, or they could have nailed Connor right there.”

  “That’s what the shots were.” Comprehension finally filtered through to me. “You were tranked. All of you. He lobbed the tear gas so nobody could see, and then it was like shooting fish in a barrel. He needed you alive so he could shuffle off the blame and continue working as a double agent.”

  Spider had been following the exchange open-mouthed, his head swivelling back and forth. “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “Mike and I were gaming over at the cafe. We needed some props, so he drove me home to get them. Then I woke up in the hospital.”

  “He drugged you and set your house on fire,” I said gently. “He was Fuzzy Bunny’s agent.”

  “But...” He gazed helplessly at me. “Linda told me at the hospital that my house burned down.” He gulped. “Completely. My new house.” His voice quavered, and I reached to hold his hand. “Why would he do that?” he asked.

  “Spider, Connor was setting you up.”

  “Yes,” Stemp agreed. “Smith intercepted a plain-text message to Fuzzy Bunny that was sent from your laptop yesterday evening, saying that you had captured the asset.”

  “He planned to make it look as though you’d abducted me and then been killed in a fire,” I told Spider. “He tricked me into going over to your house by telling me that you’d collapsed. He lit the fire to force me to leave you.”

  “But you wouldn’t.” Spider squeezed my hand. “Linda told me the firefighters said you dragged me out. You wouldn’t let go even when you couldn’t go any further.”

  I smiled at him. “Of course I wouldn’t leave you.”

  A snort from the other side of the glass interrupted us. “This is all very touching,” Stemp said. “May we get back to the point, please? Dr. Roth said you killed him and left the body to burn in the house.”

  I felt Spider’s jerk of shock.

  “Yes, that’s true,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry, Spider.”

  Stemp gave a brisk nod. “Well done.” He surveyed me. “I presume you lost your weapon in the fire? You didn’t have it on you at the hospital.”

  “I dropped it when I was dragging Spider.”

  He reached for the keypad again, and the door slid open. “I’ll arrange for a replacement. You can pick it up by end of day. Kane, Germain, you can retrieve your weapons from the storage locker. You’re all free to go. Get back to work.”

  He turned and walked away, trailed by the three guards.

  Chapter 51

  We all stood frozen. My brain steadfastly refused to comprehend what had just happened.

  “That’s... that’s it?” Spider’s eyes were wide. “Just like that?”

  Kane’s lips quirked up in a humourless smile. “That’s how Stemp operates. Instant action. He was an excellent field agent.”

  I opened my mouth but nothing came out. It seemed as though I should be doing a dance of joy, but no emotion penetrated the shock. I had been wrong about Stemp. I had been wrong about Connor. So desperately, dangerously wrong. I’d come so close to losing these three men who meant so much to me.

  I hugged them fiercely, each in turn. When I stepped back, I returned their smiles and turned to Kane. “We have to go to the hotel.”

  Spider blushed, and Germain’s eyebrows went up.

  “Why?” Kane asked warily.

  “Because Hellhound’s there. You’ve got a reunion to go to.”

  In the hotel lobby, I stopped Kane. “Just give me a few minutes to tell him. It’ll be a hell of a shock.”

  He nodded and sat in one of the lobby chairs while I made my way up to Hellhound’s room.

  I tapped on the door and waited. There was no response, and I pressed my ear to the door to hear soft snoring. I knocked a little harder, and was rewarded a few seconds later when the door opened to reveal Hellhound’s bleary face.

  His brow furrowed and he scrubbed a hand over his beard. “Hi, darlin’. What’re ya doin’ here?” He shook his head and blinked sleepily. “Come on in.”

  I slipped in the door and closed it behind me. He pulled me into a kiss. “Still pretty early, darlin’. Ya comin’ to bed?” He began to tow me in that direction.

  “Not right now.”

  His eyes sharpened at my tone. “Aydan, what is it?”

  “I have some news. I think you’d better sit down.”

  He scanned my face as he sank onto the bed. His hand tightened on mine and sick expectation filled his eyes. “Tell me.”

  “It’s good news,” I hastened to reassure him.

  “Then why’m I sittin’ down?” he demanded. “Jesus, Aydan, ya ain’t pregnant are ya?”

  I recoiled. “Christ, no! Bite your tongue, man!”

  He slumped in relief.

  “That can’t happen,” I added. “I’ve been fixed. We’re safe even if a condom fails.”

  “Good.” He took a deep breath. “Jesus. Then spit it out, darlin’.”

  “John’s alive.”

  He searched my face and pulled me gently down to sit beside him. “Aydan, ya saw him die, remember? Remember we talked about this at the hospital?”

  “No!” I took his frowning face in my hands. “I mean, yes, I remember we talked about it, but I was wrong. They lied to us. They lied to us all. He’s alive. He’s downstairs.”

  His face went slack. I gave him a little shake. “He’s alive.”

  A knock at the door made me jump. “I’ll get it.” I left him sitting silently on the bed and opened the door a crack.

  Kane stood in the hallway. “Is he here?”

  At the sound of his voice, I was rocked by a bellow from behind me.

  Kane grinned and stepped into the room as Hellhound lunged. “Ya fuckin’ asshole! I oughta kick your fuckin’ ass! Ya goddam sneaky spyin’ sonuvabitch!” He seized Kane in a rough embrace and pounded him on the back.

  I slipped out the door to the sound of Kane’s laughter. “Jeez, put some pants on! I don’t want to get hugged by some naked ugly bastard...”

  I left them to what would undoubtedly be the first of many joyful reunions for Kane. I had business elsewhere.

  I strode into Stemp’s office without knocking and closed the door behind me. He glanced up, unsurprised, as I sat without invitation.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” he said.

  “I don’t doubt it.” I met his snake-like eyes. “Because you’ve managed to hurt quite a number of the people I care about. And I promised that you’d pay. I keep my promises.”

  He leaned back in his chair, the faintest smile playing about his lips. “Let’s cut the crap. We both know you won’t do anything to threaten national security. We both know you’ll keep on doing the decryptions and putting your life on the line no matter what. We both know you can’t harm me. So drop the empty threats.”

  All the pain he’d caused, dismissed with a shrug. Just collateral damage.

  Rage poured through my blood, burning like strong liquor. I channelled it, shaped it, narrowed it into a white-hot beam of pure hatred.

  I held my voice steady with a supreme effort. “You’re right, of course.” I sounded almost conversational. “I can’t hurt you physically, and I’ll keep on doing the right thing for the country. But I think you need to understand the kind of pain
you’ve caused.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.” I leaned back in my chair, too. “How’s Katya?”

  He was good. If I hadn’t known to watch for it, I would have missed the tiny flicker of his eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone named Katya.”

  “You didn’t get to talk to her this morning, did you?”

  There was definitely a flicker that time. He stretched nonchalantly and linked his hands behind his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you finished?”

  “That’s a nice apartment she’s got in Sofia, over on Dianabad. Nice and close to her work at the university.”

  He shifted in his chair but said nothing.

  I shrugged. “I thought you might be interested to know what would happen to her if Fuzzy Bunny found out about your relationship. But I guess you don’t know who I’m talking about.” I made as if to rise.

  “Sit.” Suddenly I was looking into the barrel of his gun. God, he was fast. I hadn’t even seen him draw.

  I leaned back again. Slowly and carefully.

  “Let’s cut the crap.” I spat his words back at him. “We both know you won’t shoot me.”

  “What have you done to Katya?” He was holding on to his imperturbable mask, but I could see it crumbling.

  “Don’t you wish you’d talked to her this morning? I thought you should know how it feels to discover that someone you care about is gone forever. No chance to hold them one last time. No chance to say goodbye.”

  “What have you done?” I could read the anguish in his eyes now.

  “How does it feel?” I asked him softly. “Imagine what John’s father went through when you told him his son was dead.”

  Stemp’s face twisted, a shocking change from his usual emotionless facade. His knuckles whitened on the gun as he surged forward over the desk. “What have you done to Anna?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t play games with me! What have you done to my daughter?”

  As I stared blankly up into the tortured eyes of a man who’d lost his child, my stomach churned with slow nausea. I hadn’t known they had a child. He’d been in Bulgaria for the first time seven years ago. She’d be about six years old. Maybe younger. My throat closed up.