Deadly Testimony

by Piper J. Drake

  He shook his head, still not getting it. “Why not get to know—”

  “Because if I’m getting to know someone in their spare time, it’s probably because I’m hunting them.” Fine. She’d tell him directly. “I’m a sniper, Kyle. If I’m not providing cover for my team from a distance, I’m working on my own and I have a target. Getting to know someone is research for me. It’s still work and generally, my target ends up dead. Because I’m good at what I do.”

  Kyle shifted his weight, turning toward her as he leaned on one elbow on the counter. “I see.”

  Boom.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The world exploded.

  Well, not the world, but something.

  Kyle ducked instinctively, but it was Lizzy who grabbed him by a handful of his shirt and yanked him down under the partial shelter of the bar. People screamed. Bars of chocolate fell off the shelves and bottles of wine fell from the rack along the one wall, crashing on the floor in shattered glass. Pieces of plaster came down from the ceiling.

  She yanked a wig down over his head. “Get that straight.”

  With shaking hands, he did his best to tuck his hair under the skullcap of the wig, changing his hair from black to brown.

  Lizzy’s gaze passed over him and then she was reaching into her bag. A moment later, she jammed a cap down over his head.

  After another few seconds, Lizzy’s voice cut through the din. “Now. With everyone else. If we’re going out, it has to be with the group.”

  He scrambled to stay with her as she pulled him into the panicking group of tourists. They poured out of the store to see equal chaos on the street. Sirens filled the air, getting louder.

  “It wasn’t this store and it wasn’t a large enough charge to bring the building down,” Lizzy was saying urgently. “Stand and stare like everyone else. Keep your head down though. Don’t look all the way up. We’ll wait until the emergency vehicles get here.”

  He swallowed, staring at the apartment building on the corner. It was all too familiar. In fact, he’d barely been gone from it for more than a couple of days. Several floors up, there was a hole in the side of the building billowing smoke.

  His stomach twisted with sudden nausea. “That’s...”

  “Yes.” Lizzy’s whisper was grim. “It is. They still think we’re in the city. They’re trying to freak us out. Letting us know they found the actual apartment we were in.”

  “Did they just search it?” He had an insane moment to wonder if they’d found the excellent sandwich-making supplies in the refrigerator.

  “Maybe. They could be watching to see if anyone leaves the building now, or one of the other apartment buildings nearby.” Two or three people had their smartphones out, taking pictures or video of the destruction. Lizzy was doing the same. “Or maybe they’re watching the hotel registers to see if anyone checks into a hotel somewhere downtown immediately after this. Someone who didn’t have a previous reservation.”

  More and more people were gathering. He wanted to look around wildly, see who might be watching. Who might find him.

  Lizzy’s hand clamped on his arm like a vise. “Keep watching what everyone else is watching. It’s another tactic. They don’t know if we’re here. It’s an act of desperation. They’re trying to startle us into running. Otherwise, we’d already be dead.”

  Desperation.

  There was a tickle at the back of his throat. Maybe it was the dust from the explosion. He wanted to cough. He wanted to laugh hysterically. “I’d be dead.”

  “We. We would be.” Lizzy put her phone away. “They have to know you couldn’t hide for this long by yourself. They’d drop who was with you too. But this tells us a couple of interesting things.”

  Concise was one thing. A dislike for stating the obvious was completely understandable. Her propensity for being vague and understating the situation was giving him anxiety issues.

  “You must be kidding.” He would’ve started walking up or down the street—for God’s sake—in any direction, but she held him in place. They continued to stand among more and more people as they gathered to gawk now that the initial panic had subsided.

  “Breathe,” she advised.

  Fine. In through his nose, out through his mouth, with his hand half covering the lower part of his face to fend off the worst of the dust still hanging in the air. Like everyone else.

  “This is crazy.” He looked at her, stared at her. She was vibrant to him. Alive in this situation. This was her element, handling a situation he’d previously only ever imagined via television or movies. Through every moment they’d been together from the night he’d met her, she’d taken in everything without a hint of uncertainty. This was her work.

  “This is wrong.” Her jaw was set. “It’s a danger to bystanders. It’s a jackass move.”

  “You wouldn’t do something like this. Nobody sane would.” He was incredibly relieved when she didn’t correct him. Sometimes you said something so the person could prove to you that your assumption was correct.

  “Sane people have done awful things. Insanity isn’t a thing somebody either is or isn’t.” Her response came out flat. She turned, catching the crowds in the video on her phone before returning to the smoke pouring from the gap in the side of the building. “I haven’t done this, here. No. But don’t go thinking of me as a good person either. Don’t.”

  He’d wanted to know more about her. Now it was coming too fast to absorb, comprehend. It was more than intimidating, coming to grips with so many revelations. He’d known she could kill. He hadn’t considered just how much her career choice required actively doing it. But as she hadn’t withdrawn from him, the least he could do was absorb what she’d shared. Process the truth of it. He wouldn’t react without thinking. So he backtracked to steadier ground. “You’re sure we shouldn’t be at least making our way to the edge of the crowd?”

  “Nope. In the crowd, we’re as safe as we can be. They’re probably above us. They can’t take a close look at people’s faces on the street level. Otherwise, they’d have taken a shot at you by now, or at least sent more thugs to get you isolated. Muscle can snag us from the edge of the crowd in this kind of panic. It’d be a lot harder with us in the middle.”

  She didn’t need to tell him not to look up. He’d already absorbed that lesson earlier. The sirens were getting closer, different kinds. He wondered if she could tell the difference between police and emergency response vehicle sirens.

  “Any chance they don’t know my face?” Amazing he hadn’t asked her yet. She’d constantly made him wear sunglasses of varying shapes and sizes whenever they’d been outside. But they were here, out in the open, and he had a wild hope.

  “They know it. It’s easy to find as part of a background check.” A pause. “Most biotech companies require photo ID on employee badges. They’d have the picture from your employer at least. Could get it from the DMV too, assuming you have a driver’s license.

  Fear wrapped around his belly and squeezed tight. “Do you ever lie to make someone feel better?”

  “You can hold your shit together.” She sounded sure. He wasn’t. “You’ve never had to before. Not like this. But you can. Just another couple of minutes and we walk away with the other rubberneckers. Wait for the police to come and secure the area. When they tell people to move along, we will.”

  He wanted to run down the street, indoors, go anywhere. “Can’t we just get in a police car? Let them take us someplace safe.”

  “What if they’ve paid off some of the police?”

  Cold ran through him with Lizzy’s question. He kicked himself for not having thought of it before, especially when she so obviously had.

  “You’re safe in the crowd. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t bolt. Go with the flow of foot traffic.”

  Police arrived,
finally. They got out of their squad cars and started waving people on by. Lizzy kept her hand on his arm and led him away.

  As they walked, she raised a mobile phone to her ear. It wasn’t the smartphone she’d been using earlier.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m making a call while we’re on the move.” Lizzy was amazingly calm. “We’re taking a big loop around the block.”

  “Seriously?” He mentally scrambled trying to see how any sort of phone call made sense when she had insisted on no contact until now.

  “Part of the info we just received is enough to shock me and I’ve seen a lot of horrible things in my time. We’re going to want to keep walking if we’re going to talk about this.”

  * * *

  “Hello?”

  The man on the other end of the call sounded both disgruntled and eager. Then again, she’d balanced her brief chat with the administrative assistant to both bully the poor girl and bait Kyle’s former employer into taking her call.

  “Mr. Douglas, I’m glad I was able to reach you.” She kept her tone pleasant, bland. Next to her, Kyle missed a step as they walked and glared at her.

  “Who is this?”

  Lizzy allowed her smile to come through with her words. “An interested party. I was able to uncover your contact information in conjunction with the trial coming up shortly involving a certain biotechnology company.”

  There was a pause. “I don’t speak to the press.”

  “The press doesn’t have access to you, Mr. Douglas, and you know your administrative assistant wouldn’t have connected the call to you if I was a journalist.” Lizzy chuckled. “I’m an independent contractor aware of the very sloppy work some of your current associates have been leaving all around downtown.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Douglas harrumphed.

  “You do.” Okay, she’d managed nice for enough of this exchange. Victoria would be proud of the practice she put in. “You’re looking for Kyle Yeun and I have him. You want him bad enough to dangle that woman and her kid on TV for him. I think you’ve got deep enough pockets to pay me for this phone call and my help.”

  Another silence as Douglas obviously considered. “How much do you want?”

  “Ah, ah.” Lizzy glanced over at Kyle and rolled her eyes. The gesture took a fraction of tension out of his shoulders and he continued to walk and occasionally pause so she could look in the reflection of the glass storefronts. “I have a reputation to maintain and he believes I am on his payroll at the moment. I can convince him that I’ve arranged for a trade. Him for his family. Once the trade is complete, I’ll simply fail to rescue him from you. In terms of compensation, I want double the fee you’re currently paying your sniper from Edict.”

  “Done.” Douglas answered too quickly. “How did you know about Edict?”

  “I have a former colleague in the organization, you can check with her as a reference if you’d like. Her name is Jewel.”

  Douglas let out an impatient huff. “Not someone I’m familiar with but I’ll put in an inquiry.”

  “You might want to provide feedback about the lack of finesse your current man has while you’re at it.” All right, that wasn’t necessary. She had a mean streak to her and she also didn’t have the opportunity to taunt her opponent directly. But she was both irritated and appalled by the explosion and the collateral damage it might’ve incurred.

  And she was also sure now that she wasn’t going to be head-to-head with Jewel.

  “Have Yeun come get his family at 2:00 a.m. on Harbor Island,” Douglas growled. “B-Two Ten on the lot.”

  “Will they actually be there?” Lizzy took her pitch back to a sweet lilt. “I’d really prefer if he believed everything was going the way I said it would.”

  “They’ll be there. We’ll deal with everyone at once.” He was sure of himself.

  “Pleasure doing business.” Lizzy ended the call before the guy warmed up to his super villain role. Really, could the man get any more predictable?

  She and Kyle stepped into Post Alley, making a show of cuddling in a doorway. “Seriously, how did you stand working for that man?”

  Kyle’s arms tightened around her waist. “I’m overjoyed not to have to report to him any longer.”

  She sighed. “I’ve arranged a time and a place for a theoretical trade to get them back. You have about thirty seconds to decide whether I’m actually going to hand you over to him.”

  He’d be stupid not to consider it. But they didn’t have much time for him to decide whether he was going to trust her or not and he definitely didn’t have time to seek out other alternatives.

  “Well, when you put it that way, how can I possibly doubt you?” The amusement in Kyle’s voice tickled her.

  He was a smart man and she’d had the discussion right in front of him. So maybe she wanted to hear him say he trusted her. Especially considering the way she’d gone harsh on him directly before the explosion. The weight of his arms around her, the twinkle of mischief in his warm brown eyes and the upturned corner of her mouth were all reassurances.

  At least one of them liked the person she was.

  “Tonight, I’m going to prove your confidence in me isn’t misplaced.” But first, she needed to acquire some additional reinforcements.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I’m going to need to make contact with Safeguard.” Lizzy tossed the disposable cell phone into a streetside trash can and took out her smartphone, scrolling through screens with her thumb.

  “If we’re going to walk all the way to the offices, we’re headed in the wrong direction.” Kyle was not thrilled about traveling the distance. It would take hours. Perhaps she could be convinced to hail a cab. Or they could walk into any nearby hotel lobby and have the bellmen get one for them. It would satisfy Lizzy’s insistence on staying inconspicuous.

  “No. We’re staying in downtown.” Lizzy glanced up and around for a long moment before going back to consulting her phone. “Safeguard is managing security for a charity a few blocks from our hotel this evening. Specifically, it’ll be my teammates on duty. We can contact them there.”

  “Coincidence?” He had trouble accepting it. It was very convenient.

  “Maybe,” Lizzy said slowly, slipping her phone back into her pocket. “Or Diaz wanted to make sure he and the team were close enough to provide support if things got dicey closer to the trial. He’d do it for any of us. The man’s instincts are freaking amazing sometimes.”

  Her team was her family, he realized. They trusted each other to stand on their own and they were on hand in case they were needed. It was a far cry from the cutthroat corporate environment he’d been in at Phoenix Biotech and closer to the family business his father had run until they’d been bought out early in his career.

  “They’ll be providing private security for a charity event tonight.” She had them pause as she pretended to fix her hair in the reflection of a storefront. “I can slip in and connect with any one of them. It’s just a question of getting in, blending and then walking out again. They’ll be able to finish up the event and meet with us afterward.”

  “And we need them?” He didn’t want to spend all night arguing his cause to more people. His family could die while they all told him how important his testimony was.

  Lizzy came to a stop and pulled him close, making it look like they were taking a selfie. He complied and assumed a silly pose. On the screen of the smartphone was a horrific image.

  He swallowed hard as Lizzy used her thumb to swipe the screen, showing him another, then a third. They were photos of dead people, laid out next to a shipping container. Bloated, discolored, rotted, they weren’t recognizable at all but they were people.

  Finally, Lizzy tapped the screen and switched to a text document with several
names accompanied by contact information, including his employer.

  “They found what was inside the shipping containers,” Lizzy whispered. “You thought they might be smuggling something, drugs, whatever. But it was much worse. This is definitely worth your life.”

  Even when she released him and tugged him back into a walk, he had trouble shaking off the shock of it.

  “Look, it’s a lot to absorb and I don’t blame you for worrying. This is your family we’re talking about, and your life. I’ve done okay on my own but to make sure this goes the way it needs to, I need reinforcements.” Her gaze caught him up and held him with soul-deep sincerity. “We’re not military or police, tied up in red tape, having to follow procedure. The Centurions will do the right thing. So once we do this tonight, we’ll make sure your family is safe, and then you need to do the right thing too.”

  She wanted him to testify. This was the first time she’d expressed her opinion of whether he should or shouldn’t. But this news, those dead people, mattered to her. If he didn’t testify, they’d have died with no one to take responsibility for their deaths.

  So far, Lizzy hadn’t led him in the wrong direction.

  “Best chance to make the trade and get all of you out safely.” She didn’t make him a promise. He was glad she didn’t try to give him hollow reassurances. “You can’t do this by yourself and I’m not enough to keep you safe and your family too.”

  “I’ve seen you do some amazing things all by yourself.” He smiled and was rewarded by a small return smile from her.

  “I can do a lot of things solo. I like it that way.” She huffed out a breath. “But this requires a team.”

  They continued down the street, stopping in the shelter of a fountain to sit and watch people walk by.

  After a moment, Lizzy spoke. “If I wanted to stick to the exact letter of my contract and only keep you safe, I’d have to tie you up or sedate you until the trial. It’d be for your own good.”

  “I’d never forgive you.” Even the thought of it made his stomach clench and he considered running down the street, away from her. But worse than not knowing where he’d go, he wouldn’t know who to ask for help.