by Tara Brown
I almost bit right through my lip, trying to remember the story we had agreed on. Instead of showing her my nerves, I shrugged, "A man. Servario had collapsed from a drink, we assumed poison. A man came in and freed us all. He was older, tall, and built. He didn’t stay when the CI agents came. He had fled by then."
She sighed, "Did you ever hear him on the phone?"
I shook my head, sitting perfectly still, "No. After Servario double-crossed us by pretending to kill James, but really killing Roxy to tie up the lose end, he took us to Boston and forced us to the hotel. He was going to trade us to someone. We think that was when the real Master Key struck. Servario had faked his death so the agency was no longer looking for him or James. The Master Key believed them dead so he just freed us and fled."
We had rehearsed it over and over but my palms were sweating.
She chewed a pickled asparagus for a moment, processing it all. She paused her thoughts and gave the guard a nod. He walked to me, slapping me hard again. I cried out. My head was throbbing brutally. She came and sat across from me again, "You are of no use to me, Evie. None whatsoever. This was why I told James not to bother bringing you here. No one is coming for you and you have no information for me. Servario has tried, James has tried, and now I have tried even if it was unintentional. Your father is not coming. Fitz is not coming. Your mother is not coming." She wriggled her lips, "I can only assume it is one of two things. They are involved in the Burrow or they don’t care for you." Her dark eyes grew hateful, "But I knew your mother well, and so I know she would die for you." A devious smile crept over her lips, "Your mother is the Master Key. That is why she has not saved you and the same with your father. They are involved in this. They would have come for you already and they have not. It really can only mean one thing. They have something bigger to protect than their love for you."
I looked past her at the white board next to the fridge. It had a list of ingredients.
Soybeans.
Vanilla.
Calamari.
Spaghetti.
Evie.
Couch Cushions.
I slipped my hand in between the couch cushions. I didn’t jump when the slim blade cut my fingertip. I gripped the exceptionally-narrow hilt of the knife.
How had he done it? How had he known I would sit there and she would sit across from me? I almost smiled, knowing it was in my hands.
She got up and walked to me, "If they won't come and save you, Evie, then I don’t need you." She grabbed my arm, shoving me towards the door, away from the guard. A savage smirk crept across my lips, "What makes you so certain I need them to come and save me, Mary." I swung my hand back, stabbing her in the jugular fast and then elbowing her in the ribs. Her blood greased my hand as I pulled the extremely-sharp blade from her throat. She almost went down, but I grabbed her. The guard fired two shots. I used her as a shield and fired on him with her gun in her hand. He dropped as I dropped her. Footsteps came from behind me. Sooky's scream was cut short as blood dripped from between her eyes, and I noticed my hand never even shook as I had pulled the trigger. The second guard, the one who had taken it in the ass came in. I held the gun on him, "Really? You would kill me after she did what she did to you?"
He thought for a split second before lifting his gun. I fired, hitting him in the head like Sooky. I waited but no more guards came in. I sat down on the couch where she had been sitting as Servario came in, sauntering with a smug look.
He looked down at the dead and sat on the couch across from me. He looked beautiful in his dress shirt and slacks. I looked down at my torn and bloodied clothing. How had it gotten so bad?
"You look like hell, Evie." I nodded. He tilted his head, " I was so scared when I got to the brothel and you weren’t there. Oh God, you can't even know. James had gone back on the plan to take you there and brought you here instead. Did they hurt you? Do you need a cry or to punch something?"
I shook my head. It was the truth. I didn’t. I also didn’t want to cry with him. I didn’t trust him, not a hundred percent. "Knives in couch cushions? That was your great plan?"
He nodded slowly, still looking haunted almost, "It worked and I had no time. I couldn’t let them think I cared for you, beyond the fulfillment of your contract."
I scowled, "Not if I'd sat on that side of the room."
He chuckled and looked down.
"How long have she and James known about each other?"
"A little while."
I wrinkled my lips, processing it all, "What now?"
He winked, "Next leg of the journey. We have to go after the head of MI6."
I scowled, "We just did."
He laughed, "Mary has been the middle man for a long time. Apparently, James’ father was the previous leader of MI6. When Mary got pregnant, he made her give James up to Americans. He made sure she could never find him and used James' safety as a means to keep Mary in check. But behind her back, he manipulated it so James joined cadets, the military, and CI and met you. James has been a British agent since he was about twelve, he just never knew it."
I scowled, "When did you figure this all out."
He sat there, stoic like Coop always did, but he had a tell Coop didn’t. A guilty tell. One of the fingers on his right hand gave a subtle twitch, like he wanted to drum it against the arm of the couch. His green eyes were set on my lip. I cocked an eyebrow, "Well?"
He bit his lip, forcing the answer to stay inside.
I nodded, "From the start?" He didn’t budge. I shook my head, "I knew it. I knew you knew from the start. You knew Steve was dispatched to my house. That was an act for my benefit. You did put the tracking device in the heel of the shoe for the Brits. You endangered my family from the start."
His mouth opened but I put a hand up, "Don’t. Don’t lie to me."
He closed his mouth. I looked down, "What's left to do?"
"We are going to a brothel…"
"Fuck!" I waved my hand, holding him off, but also distracting him from the fact I was tucking the knife from between the couch cushions into my pocket. "I don’t need to know. Surprise me." I got up and walked past the window where he had also written, 'Evie couch cushions' backwards in white finger smears. "What room should I shower in?"
He looked like he wanted to say a thousand things and I wanted him to, but he took the coward's path. He just looked at the front of the boat, "We are going to board a small boat and leave this one the way it is."
I looked around the boat, "You'll be blamed for the death of a British and American agent."
He gave me a look. I sighed, "Right, of course. Of course you would want that. It makes you look good to the Burrow, American intelligence, and the bad guys. Of course British intelligence probably will reward you for this, won't they? They know she was a double agent all along, don’t they? I watched her with Sooky, talking about how they would have to turn the weapons in to the Brits. I could tell she thought that was a joke. She was going to sell them, wasn’t she? She never was going to give the Burrow up."
He gave me a soft smile, "Evie, the world wants the Burrow, not just the bad guys. Besides, what makes you think the head of MI6 is a good man? Let's go to the boat. It looks better if you look the way you do."
I shook my head, "I look like I was in a plane crash."
He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, "Yes, but you also look like you fought me tooth and nail to get away."
He held his hands out. They were bloodied and swollen. I scowled, "What is that?"
He laughed, "That is what I was doing when you were killing everything up here."
"What?"
He nodded, "The guards below, there were several. The main sleeping area is down below."
My gaze narrowed, "You wrote couch cushions and my name in messy writing on the white board because you knew she was going to try to kill me, but then you left me?"
He nodded.
I gasped, "You were covering your ass in case she killed me? You stayed below in case it didn’t turn ou
t the way you had hoped it would, but either way, you would have been safe from me blowing your cover."
His eyes couldn’t hide the truth.
I knew I looked wounded. I could see it on his face and hear it in my tone, "Fuck you, Servario."
He sighed, "Language, Evie. I don’t like to be spoken to that way. You know that."
I growled, "I don’t like being hung out to dry by someone who told me they loved me." I stormed past him to the boat. I climbed down the ladder and sat on the seat. He followed slowly, pulling on sunglasses and looking guilty as hell.
I watched his face for a split second, praying it would soften but it didn’t. He truly was the best Master Key the Burrow ever had. He would have let me die. I looked out at the water and knew my mother had not come either. She and my father had left me with Servario, fully aware of the type of man he was. Fully aware of the fact that he would let me die to protect the cause. Everyone was so prepared to lose everything for the Burrow. I wasn’t though.
I was never going to be the agent they were.
Chapter Fifteen
Web of Lies
His fingers gripped into my skin as he dragged me through the seedy alley. I had never been to Split before. I had heard of the dangers for foreigners in Croatia, and being a parent it had never been a big tourist destination for us, but Servario looked like he fit into the crowd quite well.
Dark eyes watched me from every corner. No one helped the obviously-foreign woman being dragged down the alley. No one asked him why I was beaten or sobbing.
He muttered, "Make it a good show. I don’t think I can hit you again. Coop and Jack are here. They're waiting for us to enter. So make this believable. It's more than just my neck on the line."
I ignored my heart, leaping at the thought that Coop was there and shoved him, "Let me go, you fucker."
He gripped my arm tighter, making me cry out. I could swear that on at least one face in the crowd, I saw a look of joy or satisfaction.
We walked in silence, except for the sound of him dialing his cell phone in his pocket. I pretended not to hear it, in case there were eyes on us.
He dragged me to a hotel at the end of an alley. It looked like the Romans had built it during the empire. A red, weather-beaten door creaked open as we neared it. A man with a semi-automatic gun gave me a sneer but nodded at Servario. As we entered the hotel, I instantly stopped breathing through my nose. The stench was overwhelming. There was a soft floral smell added to something else. Like if sin had a stink, that place was ripe with it.
A half-naked girl with long blonde hair and dark circles under her cloudy blue eyes gave me a dead look. I recognized her face from somewhere.
Her thin, pale arms were filled with pick sores and needles marks. There was one particularly-nasty pick sore that was like a dug channel going up her arm. Like she had scratched it repeatedly and it had healed over, and she had scraped it again.
Servario tossed me to the floor. The knife in my pocket stabbed into my thigh slightly.
The girl twirled her hair, giving me the blank stare. I could see some kind of life beyond her eyes if I searched for it past their milky coloring.
Her skin's pallor was chalky white, almost grey. She looked like a ghost where she sat on the torn burgundy couch in the corner of the large entryway. It was any lobby in any seedy hotel. Too thick curtains and too thin rugs. The couches were threadbare and the room had plastic flowers and an old front desk.
The high ceilings had fans that moved slowly. Nothing in the room seemed like it was in a hurry. It was like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, slow and blurred. A man in a cheesy suit with greasy dark hair came out of the door in the back. He opened his arms, smiling wide, "Mr. Servario, to what do we owe the pleasure?" His accent was actually quite lovely. His sleazy-salesman face ruined it.
Servario didn’t bat an eyelash, "He's expecting us."
The man jumped. Servario had an air about him I had not seen before. There was a wall around him, like he was royalty. The man moved like it might be true.
My hands didn’t move from the tile floor where I knelt, looking afraid. Really it was pain. The knife stabbing into my thigh was killing me. It at least helped me focus on the things I saw. The things around me.
The man went into the back and came back within seconds, "He's upstairs. He thought you would have gotten here earlier. So he took his lunch." His eyes darted to me, "He said to leave his supper in a room upstairs. He will talk business with you in a moment."
Servario snapped his fingers at me. I spat at him. He backhanded me, stabbing the knife farther into my thigh when I fell back.
"She needs to be broken and trained better than that, Mr. Servario. You always bring better merchandise than this."
My guts burned. He had seemed so against human trafficking in the shower. But in the brothel he seemed like he fit in nicely. The blonde even looked scared of him. I wanted to kick him in the balls. I even thought about doing it, but I knew the punishment would be severe. My mom always did say, ‘Was the juice worth the squeeze?’ This seemed like a giant no.
He snapped at the man, "I'll not discuss product with you." He grabbed my arm, dragging me to the elevator, "Besides, she will be more fun to break."
The man laughed nervously, "Of course, sir. I am sorry I spoke out of turn."
Servario carried me into the elevator. As the doors closed, he gripped harder on my arm, "I told you to behave." His accent was thick, almost fake.
I whimpered, "I am sorry." I looked down, assuming we were on film.
He leaned into my ear, "Look straight ahead at the door and make it a face of terror."
I nodded, quivering my lips slightly.
"Your friends should be here by now. I will leave you in the room upstairs, kill the man who comes in the room. I know you took the second knife from the other couch, use that. Make it silent."
I sniffled, "Please, don’t do this. Please. I won't tell anyone."
He spoke louder, "I won't speak of this again. I will just take you right here and right now. Do you want that? Do you want me to fuck you in a filthy elevator?"
I shook my head. Even my vagina was contemplating never opening back up for business. The fact it was a human-trafficking brothel was killing my severe attraction to bad guy Servario.
He shook me once, and as the elevator doors opened, he shoved me out into the hallway. He opened a door and pushed me inside. He closed the door slowly and leaned against it.
"Time to learn to deep throat." My eyes went wide but he nodded, "Hurry up."
I crawled over to where he was, catching a glimpse of the camera behind him. The rooms were taped.
He chuckled but I could hear the deceptive tone within the laugh, "Maybe if you're really lucky, you'll end up in one of the movies they make here. Hopefully not the darker stuff though."
I gagged and crawled to him. He undid his pants and leaned against the door. The camera above him didn’t look like it could catch us at the angle we were at, and he seemed to be a master of keeping his head down. I pulled his pants open all the way and fished in his underwear for his cock. I looked up at him, "Please, don’t make me do this."
He slapped my face lightly, "Think of it as a nice going away present."
I started to cry and grabbed hold of his cock. It was nearly inverted. I had never seen it so small. He was not turned on. He had done it to show me the cameras and the angle at which I had to do everything. I buried my face into his groin, savoring the scent of his musk and cologne. He was like an angel amongst the hellish place we were. If I closed my eyes, we were in a hotel room somewhere nice, and I was being punished for not doing something right, but it was a joke and I was letting him boss me around. I tried to get his cock near my mouth but he slapped me and shoved me off of him, "You stink and your swollen face makes me sick." He did his pants up and stormed from the room. I got up and looked around. It was a small room with a bed on the wall opposite the door. Optimum viewing area.
/> I held myself and started rocking back and forth on the bed. The camera remained in my peripheral the entire time. The room was beyond shabby, it was more of a cell. The bed was dirty and soft, and the shabby blue bedspread looked like it had either never been washed or overly washed and was threadbare.
I waited for it to happen, for the man to come into the room. Would he be the leader of MI6 or would he just be some pervert who broke in the new girls? Either way, he was dead as soon as he got the door open.
I sat, staring and rocking for so long that I started to get tired. My adrenaline was gone.
I started making designs in the carpet and plotting my escape for when no one came. The man didn’t want to break me in, he wasn’t interested in a dirty, used up woman. He liked fresh and young things.
The doorknob rattled as I was blinking and letting my eyes stay shut for five seconds at a time. The turning of the knob had me wide-awake instantly.
I braced myself for what I would do.
A slight man with a dark suit and smooth grey hair pulled back into a ponytail entered the room. He had a grey mustache but kept his gaze low. I leapt at him, begging on my knees and preparing to stab when I saw something I hadn’t been prepared for.
I looked into the eyes of my mother and stammered, "P-p-p-please, sir. Don’t make me do this. Please."
She winked and opened the door, backing out but looking both ways down the hall. I crawled out, following her steps exactly.
I didn’t feel relief seeing her. I felt fear like I never had. Where were my kids?
The fear only lasted a second. A man came up the stairs, not paying much attention. Mom lifted her hand and down he went. I didn’t even see the weapon. She ran from room to room, moving as if it were a dance. I assumed she was avoiding the cameras. She moved like a ninja, light and agile. She held double swords in her hands, very thin and shiny blades. She kept them tucked up into her arms with her wrists at an odd angle, until it was time to strike. Only then could you see the lightening speed with which she could kill.
In each room she went into, men dropped to their knees, and then face-planted into the nasty carpet. Girls shouted, covering themselves. Other men died on their bellies with girls screaming below them, pressed into the mattress by a dead man. Mom never gave thought to the girls. She was a true assassin.
