by Fiona Quinn
“Sorry.” My voice came out as a whisper.
Blaze sat gently on the bed.
“Striker won’t let me see a mirror,” I told him.
Blaze considered me for a minute. “Yeah, that’s probably best.”
“That bad?” What the hell did I look like? Was I disfigured? Was it permanent? My nerves buzzed, making me tingle with claustrophobia. I desperately wanted to pry myself loose from my traction unit. I tried to still my heart. No matter how much I wanted to get up and out, it wasn’t going to happen. It reminded me of how I felt in prison. I still wasn’t free.
He shrugged. “It was worse. You look tired.”
“No, not tired. Bored. Why don’t you tell me a story?”
“That’s Gater’s gig. I’m not a storyteller. I can tell you this, though. Axel and Randy got hold of the snake oil van. It was impounded for parking violations.”
That was a big step forward. I had spent almost every lucid moment trying to wrap my brain around why Omega was after me. All I could come up with was that somehow, someone thought I was in cahoots with Maria. Part of some elaborate plan to get her husband, Julio, out of the federal pen. Julio Rodriguez was sitting on a hundred-year sentence for terrorism. My involvement in an escape plan would get any number of agencies’ hackles up – CIA, FBI, ATF. And a court would seal the file associated with terrorism charges. That made sense.
I had cast a wide net, fishing for any other reason Omega could be targeting me, and I’d come up empty-handed. I was pinning my hopes for getting the Omega contract rescinded on understanding the what, how, and why of my kidnapping. Why me, for example? Why would Maria choose me as her kidnapping target? And if she were just trying to kidnap me, it didn’t make any sense that she would buy a house, move into my neighborhood, and try to get to know me before the kidnapping.
I had lots of questions. Lots. But I’d start with, “What about Hector?”
“Haven’t caught him yet,” Blaze said. “But they’re working on it. Seems he’s got a very angry ex-girlfriend who’s more than willing to help us find him,” he smirked. “Randy and Axel are hoping they get to Hector first. The ex- looks like she might do Hector some damage. They got his last name and his background; shouldn’t be long until we have him in custody.”
“Can you let me know before he’s interrogated? I’d like to be in on that as much as possible.”
“Absolutely. I’m sure that’s the plan.” Blaze ran a hand down his thigh and rested it on his knee. “About the van, they ran forensics to see if there was material evidence to prove it was the vehicle used to kidnap you. They found a clump of hair, pulled out at the root. Axel says it’s your length and color. They have your old toothbrush up at forensics for a DNA comparison. Did you do that on purpose, or did they pull your hair out?”
“My head was in a bag, so they didn’t really have access to my hair. I was trying to leave evidence, and I thought if you found my hair, you could prove without a doubt it had been me. I didn’t really have a lot of possibilities. I was so drugged, I thought I might have just dreamed all that, and had actually left you nothing.”
He smiled. “Nope, you did good.”
I smiled back. “Gracias.”
Blaze looked at me like he was trying to make up his mind about something. “I have some more info, if you’re okay to hear it,” he said cautiously.
Uh oh. “Sure, go ahead.”
“Did anyone tell you that we found your prison? Axel and Randy got to your area just before the storm hit the Caribbean.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. It seems I was a day early and a dollar short with my escape. If I had waited, I might have a very different outcome right now.”
“Except that Maria was there for your fingers.” Blaze was stone-faced.
I quirked one side of my mouth up. “There was that.”
“Sometimes, things have a weird way of working themselves out for the best,” Blaze said.
“More?”
“If it weren’t for your psychic ability, and your ability to puzzle through the communication problem and get us concrete details, we would never have made it down to Honduras. From what I can tell, your escape and our movement in the area were only a few hours apart.
“Randy and Axel found the airport, and sure enough, twenty kilometers south there was a prison and ten kilometers south of that was a village. The guys got a room above the cantina. They said it was like moving back in time a hundred years. There was nothing there — very secluded, no landlines, no cell tower service. Just dirt roads and poverty.”
That was true. The place was less than third world; it was like landing on Mars.
“The storm got bad, and the guys were stuck. They thought that, even though they were posing as tourists exploring the Honduran coast, it would look strange to go out in the severe weather. They were trying to gather intel, though, the best they could under the circumstances. They spent a lot of time in the cantina, buying rounds, making friends and listening for local talk.”
Blaze had my full attention. I had wondered about all this.
“Gossip had it that there had been some non-Honduran Latinos there a few days before. Soldier types like Randy and Axel. They had been buying a lot of drinks and asking a lot of questions about the prison. Randy and Axel had their radar up, but they didn’t know what it could mean. It was apparent, though, that some group had been asking the same kinds of questions that Axel and Randy were asking.”
I was desperate to get up and pace. Taking all this in lying down was seriously overwhelming. “Omega?” I asked on an exhale.
“Frith doesn’t know. He thinks it’s possible. He’s kept his ear to the ground since he saw your name on the file. He said he heard some noises about Central America, but the first real sign that Omega was making progress came with your 911 call. For now, we’re all assuming it was Omega down there. Though how they could have found you. . .” He shook his head slightly. “Of course, before Frith contacted Command, we had no idea that we had competition. So had Maria not shown up at just that time to force your escape, and had the storm not hit, then Iniquus and Omega might have dueled it out down there. I can’t imagine that we’d all stay healthy.”
I couldn’t imagine it, either. “Someday, I’m going to tell Frith how very grateful I am for his help. He’s got guts, for sure. Okay. Good then, that I left. There’s one piece of guilt pie I don’t have to eat.”
“No. If we’re looking for silver linings, that’s one we can focus on.”
“So if Omega catches me, then what? I get sent to an American prison? I move through the American judiciary? That might be okay. I might want to just give myself over to them so I can clear my name in the courts.”
“We’re still not sure of the endgame with Omega. It wouldn’t go through the courts, though, that’s for sure. Frith doesn’t know what the order is, but he knows it isn’t good. You’re classified ‘Eradicate.’”
Eradicate? What? I was too stunned to talk. I wanted to launch myself up and into a fight for survival. How ridiculous was that notion right now tethered to this damned bed the way I was? Blaze glanced over at my monitors. No sirens. I guessed he decided I was handling this information okay, because he cleared his throat.
“Frith says that could either be a kill order, or it might be an interrogate, then kill order. I for one am not going to let either happen.”
I gripped at the safety bar like a drowning person clutching at a lifeline. Holy shit. Eradicate.
We were silent together. I could empathically feel his nerves bristling, and I tried to will the sensation away from him and from me. I had my own nerves to deal with.
He buffed an agitated palm up and down his thighs. “When we heard from Axel, we figured you had run away from the prison before the storm hit the Caribbean and, being in no man’s land, you wouldn’t have had any warning.”
“I saw the storm coming up. I knew it was a bad idea to fly. I had no idea it was a tropical storm when I t
ook off. Even if I did know, I was out of options at that point.”
Blaze nodded. “From when Randy called to say a plane was missing at the Honduran airport, until we got the 911, I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to think we’d lost you.” His eyes hardened, and he made a fist over my hand, squeezing my fingers. “I’m not saying that I was hopeless. I’m saying from a pragmatic point of view, with the storm and all, your chances of survival seemed pretty slim.”
Blaze seemed to be venting – like he needed to say these words out loud to relieve the pressure that had been building up. I decided not to ask any questions, but just let him say everything he needed.
“When we got to you. . .that was horrible. The scene was surreal – it was hard to imagine that the skeleton we were saving was actually you.”
Blaze stopped talking when a nurse walked in my door. In my peripheral vision, I saw flashes of blue as she passed through my room. Barb and Peggy were the nurses usually assigned to me. I didn’t recognize this nurse’s voice as she acknowledged Blaze. She was fussing about something across the room where I couldn’t see her. Blaze and I sat quietly together, waiting for privacy.
A siren went off in the hallway. It was loud enough to wake the dead. The lights over my bed flashed on and off. Trapped by my traction unit, all I could do was flail my arms. I was easy prey.
With the first sound, Blaze jumped to his feet, Glock in hand pointed at the nurse.
“Hands up!” Blaze’s voice was threatening as hell.
“What are you doing? Put your weapon away, soldier.”
The nurse moved close enough to me that I could see she had her hands up near her ears and in her right hand she held a syringe of clear liquid. She took a step closer to my bed.
“Freeze!” Blaze commanded.
There was a scuffling sound and an “oof” as a body hit the wall. More alarms sirened – this time from inside my room – my monitors were going ballistic. The nurse was yelling at Blaze to lower his goddamned weapon and let her the hell go so she could help me.
My door crashed open and Deep called, “Let her go, Blaze. Burnt popcorn catastrophe – all’s clear.”
A very irate nurse stomped her way over to my monitor bank, then everything went black.
Ten
Slowly, I became aware. My eyes, heavily sedated, didn’t want to open yet, though I kept telling them it was time. The silicone pellets in my specialized mattress gently oscillated beneath me, and its fan unit hummed. An arm cuff swelled automatically to check my blood pressure as it did every half-hour. The cold air flowing through my nasal tube tormented the cilia in my nose. A disturbing combination of scents - oxygen, rubbing alcohol, and salt. Something was different. The difference prickled around the outer edges of my consciousness. I ordered my eyelids to blink open.
I was no longer in an industrial green room. This room was butter yellow, with natural - not fluorescent - lighting. No traction unit tethered me in place. I could turn my head slightly, painfully, to the left, where French doors revealed a cloudless blue sky. Pine trees were to the right, and gray choppy water to the left of my view. And I was pissed.
The door opened on my right. Heavily booted feet sauntered over a wooden floor.
“I had you on the monitor. I was waiting for you to wake up.” Striker pointed up to a wall camera focused on my bed. “You’re at my bay house in Maryland now.”
“I figured that out.” Sarcasm. I was a little sensitive about someone moving me around without my blessing or knowledge. With memories of my days locked in a jail cell still raw, I wanted complete control over my life and limbs. “You brought me here with no warning.”
“Didn’t have time.” Striker used his soothing voice. I guessed he realized he’d crossed some invisible line. He could hear my internal warning alarms sounding. “The nurse at Lackland put you out when the burned-popcorn-catastrophe all but gave you another heart attack. The doctor’s decided to keep you out while they ran your MRI.”
“Okay.” I really didn’t want to hear it. “Everyone’s East Coast now?”
“Yeah.” He sat down gingerly on my bed, hiking one knee up and leaning forward to squint at me – his assessing look.
“That’s a funny little ‘yeah.’ What’s up?” All right, maybe I did want to hear it. “Why’d you take me out of Lackland so quickly?”
“Jack and Gater were in DC, making sure they were seen. When they went to Headquarters, Command had another visitor. Jack and Gater got to meet Frith.”
“Frith? Why? Does he have more information?” Excitement bubbled up. I wanted this stupidity solved and done.
“Not much new – he wanted to tell us that Omega was pulling out of Texas. But Omega thought the high alert at Lackland was suspicious.”
My fingers played with the silken edging on my blanket. “Those two thoughts don’t go together.”
“Omega found a hole to plant an embed at the base hospital. Frith didn’t believe they’d find anything, though. Wanted us to know he was sorry for our loss. Thought very highly of you. He hoped there could have been a happier outcome.”
“Huh.” My lips tightened, and I screwed my mouth to the side.
“Okay, what’s your take on this?”
Disappointment was my take on this. All right, think! I ordered my head. “No one at Omega knows that Frith has any connection to me, or to the case we worked on together, right? He’s reporting what he’s seeing going on over at Omega Headquarters. Does Omega have any clue we know they’re after me?”
“Absolutely. After your 911 call, their Command realized we’d be out on the search.” Striker crossed his arms over his chest and looked like a Rambo prototype, only much cuter and with rusty-brown hair. A little smile played across my lips at the thought, and Striker gave me a sideways look, then continued. “They sent word they had a warrant for your arrest. If we had any contact with you, we should pass that information on to them immediately. Failure to do so would mean we were aiding and abetting. Everyone involved would be subject to arrest and imprisonment.”
“I see. So I’m fraternizing with a criminal element?”
“Afraid so, Chica.” He bent to give me the kiss I’d been waiting for.
“Well, if I were Omega, I wouldn’t just pull out – the embed makes sense. On the outside, I’d be gauging Iniquus’ reaction. Observing movement. . .yeah. I think they’re testing the waters, trying to make Iniquus feel safe, so if I were alive, and if I had been located, then maybe we’d get sloppy enough to make a mistake. Frith wanted us to have a heads up.”
“Agreed. But we aren’t going to make any mistakes, babe,” he said.
“Thanks.” I shifted the little bit that I could and felt the beads shifting with me. “How’s Command doing with all this?”
“They’re pissed as hell. Omega doesn’t dictate to Iniquus, and Omega doesn’t go after Iniquus operatives. You’ve got two snarling alpha dogs ready to tear out each other’s jugular.” Striker’s mouth was grim. “Iniquus isn’t going to back down. Command thinks you must have put your thumb on the pulse of something big and ugly. There’s someone or some organization out there that’s got money and power.”
I frowned and looked out at the gray line of the horizon. Striker waited.
“Sylanos is the only one that comes to mind,” I said.
“Not when he’s dead. Did you know that before you figured out the name Sylanos, CIA had to refer to him by a code name? In their files, Sylanos was called Nemean. That should tell you how daunting they found him.”
“As in Nemean lion?” I asked. “Impervious to attack. But that would mean he was a standalone, and we know that’s wrong. They should have named him Hecatonchires.”
“Yeah, but no one could spell that, and no one but you could pronounce it.” Striker warmed me with a grin – double dimple action.
“Hydra, then. After all, that’s what Spyder called Sylanos’ metamorphosis. Point being, Sylanos wasn’t a one-man-sh
ow. He was a monster with many heads. Even if he were dead, that doesn’t mean the Hydra is, too.”
“Even if?” Striker shook his head. “We had men on scene. Sylanos is dead. Before we marked Sylanos off the list, we thought maybe your case had something to do with the Colombian government. We had our contacts down there put up their antennae for you.”
“Columbia? I’m lost.”
“Spyder was coming in from Colombia last Christmas when he passed out at the airport. Before he collapsed, Colombia was our mission plan. Command tapped the three of us to head downrange. Our Columbian team concluded that whatever was going on was American run. Omega involvement seemed to confirm that. But then, somehow you got shelved in Honduras, so now we’re back at square one.”
“Go back. Spyder was in Colombia? Who told you that?” I gripped at my blankets, wishing I could sit up to gain some physical control.
“Got it straight from the source.”
“You talked to Spyder? Is he better? What was wrong with him?”
“Malaria and diverticulosis. He’s 100%, and headed back out on assignment. He sends you his love.”
What? Headed out? That made no sense what so ev. . .wait. “Does Spyder know about me?”.
“I didn’t tell him anything. He thinks you’re in DC at headquarters, safe and sound in the Puzzle Room. We only had a three-minute window. I thought it would serve you best if I pulled the most information I could from him. He’s en route to Indonesia.”
“Because?”
“Coup plot that could put American industry and military interests at risk, not to mention the local population’s peppered with American ex-pats.”
“And Spyder’s supposed to stop this?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“Single handedly?”
Striker gave me a nonchalant shrug, but I could tell by his quick peeks at my monitors and the stiffness in his neck that he wasn’t feeling as offhand and detached as he’d like me to believe. “I’m not sure what he’s got for a team. My guess is he’s already got a network in place.”
