by Fiona Quinn
“What should you do, Annie? Or should I call you Alex? Or India? Or Lexi? I see the wheels spinning in your head. . .are you going to try a back flip? Are you going to fall to the right and roll? I’m a great shot, Lexi. I have an extended clip, Lexi. How about a little kung fu? I’ll tell you what, if you stand very, very still like a good girl, I promise to take you out with one bullet. You’ll never know what hit you. If you try to run, I’ll play with you. I’ll make you scream and beg for the mercy of death. Actually, I think I’d prefer it that way.
‘Small, sleek, cowering, timorous beast,
O, what a panic is in your breast!
You need not start away so hasty
With hurrying scamper!
I would be loath to run and chase you. . .’” He used a stage voice as he performed for his audience of two.
“You always were a Robert Burns fan, Frith. But you know how that poem goes. That ‘the best laid schemes of mice and men, Go often awry.’”
“Very good, little mouse! I’m impressed. And you don’t seem to have panic in your heart.”
“You don’t scare me, Frith. You are a sad, sick little man.”
A monster roiled under Frith’s skin. “I’m the cat, Lexi.” He licked his lips. “And you are the mouse. Run, mouse, run!”
There was a muffled blast of a bullet passing through a silencer. It hit the ground in front of me, making me startle and jump. Little pieces of macadam exploded up onto my bare legs. Then came the sound of unfettered firepower. The light of the blasts flashed in my left eye.
Laura stood facing in Frith’s direction with her eyes squinched tightly closed, firing her gun at nothing. Frith lay crumpled on the ground motionless. I waited for her to empty her clip, then ran over to check Frith.
“Oh my god, I killed someone. I killed Wyatt.” Laura was jumping up and down, shaking her hands in the air. Gun flailing around.
I looked up from where I crouched by his side. “Believe me, Laura, if you had, the world would be a better place. Look, Laura. Open your eyes, and stop hopping up and down. Frith was wearing a Kevlar vest. You knocked him out. That’s all.”
I picked up Frith’s gun and put it in my back waistband. I pulled off his shirt and ripped open the Velcro on his vest. If Frith came to, I wanted my shots to count. I dragged the vest off and threw it to the side. I drew up his T-shirt to see how many hits he took.
The scream of sirens came from the direction of the highway moving towards us. A gray Hummer slid around the corner of the rehab center. Jack and Randy jumped out, guns aimed.
Forty-Three
“Clear. Clear,” I shouted.
Jack looked down at the red splotches on Frith’s chest that were quickly turning to nasty bruises. He looked at me. “Did you do that?”
I pointed at Laura.
Jack nodded appreciatively. “Three shots - center mass. Good job, Laura.”
Laura responded with her high-pitched giggle. Manic.
“Police are heading in this direction. Deep’s monitoring their response. They don’t know the exact location of the gun fire. Laura,” Jack had to wait until Laura’s eyes focused on him. “We’re going to make all of this go away. Randy is going to drive you home in your car, and make sure that you’re settled and comfortable. And you’re going to chalk this up to a very bad day that you want to forget, so you do. Anything you say to anyone could open you up to arrest for holding Lexi hostage at gunpoint, and attempted murder of Frith. You don’t want to get involved with that. You want this all to go away, right now.”
“I – I – I wasn’t attempting murder. I was — it was self-defense.”
“No, ma’am. You were never a target. Lexi was the target.”
“Who?”
“Annie. Annie was Wyatt’s target.”
Randy took the wobbling gun out of Laura’s hand and handed it to me. He bent to pick up her purse and rifled through it until he came out with a set of keys tied to a mint-green shower puff. His hand slid supportively around Laura’s back, and he moved her towards her car. Laura looked back over her shoulder at me to see if I thought this was the right thing to do.
“It’s going to be fine, Laura. Let Randy take you home and get you settled. Tomorrow will be better, I promise.”
Laura looked up at Randy, and with the first sign of hysterics, whimpered like an injured dog. “He was a killer. A murderer. I was dating him. He could have killed me.”
“You’re safe, Laura. You survived. You’ll never see him again,” Randy soothed as he maneuvered her into her passenger seat and shut the door.
Jack was busy zip tying Frith and snapping on his shackles. Another Iniquus car screeched in to the lot. Striker’s long legs were on the pavement as the car came to a stop. He jogged over.
“Lynx was missing her old life and thought she’d have some fun,” Jack said.
“I can see that,” Striker’s muscles were taut and primed for action.
Striker looked down at Frith, who was coming around. Frith’s hands in the plastic restraints reached out and grabbed Jack’s pant leg When he gave a tug, trying to down giant Jack, Striker’s boot slammed into Frith’s stomach, making him puke.
“Feel better, Striker?” Jack asked.
“Considerably.”
“I’m not putting him in my car covered in spew,” Jack said.
“We could put a plastic bag over his head,” I suggested helpfully.
Striker looked over at me with a half-smile, then turned to Jack. “Call the client and have them do the pick up here.”
Jack pulled his cell from the holder at his waist. “Cops?” he asked.
“Deep called in to dispatch as an eyewitness, and sent them over to an apartment complex north of here. We won’t have any interference.”
Striker looked over at me. “How’s your back?”
“Good, thanks.”
***
That night Striker and I lay in bed – neither of us able to sleep. Beetle and Bella on the other hand were snoring loudly on the floor.
Striker stroked my hair. “I listened to the tapes again. You got an excellent confession out of him.”
“Thank you.” I turned over and could just make Striker out in the moonlight that glimmered through the window.
“Does it bother you, what he was saying about Spyder?” he asked, tracing a finger down the side of my face.
I sat up beside him and pulled my knees in to circle them with my arms. “Frith is brilliant. He was lying, and he was manipulating me. While I knew what he was up to, it did give me pause. It was painful to hear. Somewhere inside, I must have been harboring those very thoughts. He tried to shake my foundation by making me question Spyder’s relationship with me. He used enough detail so that I would say in my head, ‘yes, that’s true.’ With enough yes, that’s trues running in a line, he could insert his lies and out of habit my brain would continue saying, “yes, that’s true.” Luckily, Spyder taught me that trick, and like every magic trick, no matter how good, once you know how it works, it will never fool you again.”
“Spyder had no idea that you were in danger, or that you were injured in any way. The only time that he heard anything about you was while he was hospitalized here in DC. He wasn’t moved to an American hospital – your case didn’t make international news. I spoke with him on the way out to his assignment. He had no idea that you weren’t anything but safe, whole, and happy.”
“You decided not to tell him.”
“And that makes you angry.”
“Furious,” I agreed.
“I didn’t tell him, because he would have dropped everything to come here to be with you. We thought you were targeted by Wilson because of Spyder. We thought that your connection to Maria was through Spyder. Bringing him in while Omega was doing a war dance would have put both of you at greater risk.”
I frowned. “You were protecting me.”
“I believed that I was protecting both of you.”
“Riding into battl
e with my favor tied to your lance? You should have told me. I’m a big girl. I would have come to the same conclusion.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. My instinct is to…”
“Wear a shiny suit and fight my dragons for me. I get that, Arthur.”
Striker gave a half smile. “Now that Frith is on ice and being tried for the murders, what’s your plan?
I took a long breath in, like I was drinking a glass of cold water after a long day in the sun. “You sound like you might have a few ideas of your own.”
“I do,” he said.
“Okay. Shoot.”
“No. No shooting is involved in my plans. I think we should take a nice long vacation to somewhere beautiful, then you should go back to school, get your bachelor’s in criminal science, and try to live a nice, quiet, normal life for a while.”
“A wise man once told me that I wasn’t wired for normal. Trying to lead a commonplace life for me was like asking a Ferrari to sit in a garage. He wondered why I would want that. Traditional doesn’t mean no more loss, no more pain. He said I was an extraordinary woman. And I had to live up to that or my soul will shrivel.”
“That’s not pretty – a shriveled soul.”
“Exactly,” I smiled.
“So what’s the plan?” Striker asked, stroking a hand down my cheek and holding my chin to plant a little kiss.
“Once Blaze is healed up, I’m going to go away with you on a long and relaxing vacation to somewhere beautiful. Then I’m going try to put a knot at the end of the rope that I’ve been hanging from.”
“Meaning?”
“There are still some loose strands that need explanation, and might leave me vulnerable. I’m going to start by finding that rat Sylanos. This time, I’ll make sure that vermin is gone for good.”
“Okay, Chica.” He kissed me again. “But what say you to a wedding first?”
“What say you to a good night sleep first?”
Striker kissed me and pulled me into his chest, wrapping me in his strong arms. I felt safe here, for the moment. But I knew I wouldn’t really be safe, and no one would be safe around me, until I took down Sylanos. If Striker and I had any hopes of a happily ever after, I had to behead the Hydra.
Spyder, it’s time to come home.
The End
CUFF LYNX
One
Danger. I felt it hiss across my skin the very second I walked through the glass doors into Iniquus’ lobby. My limbic brain, the lizard part that tasted the air for threats, had gotten a mouth full. Instinctively, I slid behind the first column while I tried to re-orient myself. Slowing my breath, slowing the rhythm of my pulse, I used my martial arts training to blend with the shadows and disappear from view.
With my senses tuned in, volume turned up full blast, I watched the lobby hustle with its normal early-morning activity. I tried to figure out why the heebie-jeebies — my personal warning system — would spark here, of all places. Iniquus was supposed to be my home. My safe haven.
I scanned the room for a clue to the threat squeezing my gut.
A stream of people dressed in their Iniquus uniforms moved toward the elevator banks - a movie scene of tight-hipped men in camo fatigues and black Vibram-soled combat boots. Their gunmetal-gray compression shirts displayed the effects of our company’s mantra: “Fit bodies house sharp minds.” The women all wore the requisite shades of black and gray. The only ones not dressed in uniform were our executives in their designer suits and me. Command didn’t make me follow the uniform rules – or any other rule, for that matter.
The doors opened and another group moved into the open atrium and turned left toward the I.T. corridor. Everything looks normal. Maybe I was just being anxious. It had been a long time since I was on the job. A lot had happened in the nine months I’d been gone. I’d spent five months slowly dying in a Honduran prison; four months in recovery. Nerves?
No, that didn’t seem right. Stress showed in people’s faces and gaits; the entire pace of Iniquus had changed.
I turned my attention to the atrium itself. The sleek metallic décor, with no colors to punctuate or humanize the machinations of our job, was viscerally if not visually changed. I tried to conjure an image, a sixth-sense knowing—anything that would help me focus in on the threat I felt certain was here. The sensation I got was more than odd. The best way I could describe it was that Iniquus had unfurled. This was not the Iniquus I knew. The Iniquus I knew was a tight fist. Here, as a covert partner with the United States government, working to keep America safe, Iniquus was the guardian. And this was all wrong. Standing behind the column, I felt vulnerable. Naked. Exposed. I pulled my jacket tighter around me and watched.
Four secretaries chatted together as they walked through the doors. I recognized Leanne Burns, the PA in our head honcho General Elliot’s office. I decided to follow behind, using Master Wang’s Shinobi shadow-walking technique.
Leanne tilted her head toward the end of the corridor, calling the other women’s attention to the sleek red skirt, long shapely leg, and stiletto heel passing through the door.
“She’s back,” one of the women’s voices sing-songed, as she watched the door swing shut behind the mystery woman.
I wondered who that could be – red wasn’t a color usually seen around Iniquus. I moved into a dark recess and stilled. My eavesdropping felt rude because I wasn’t on a case. I was fishing for gossip, and this stepped over a boundary.
“Yup I saw her, too. Scarlet Vine the Divine.” The brunette, Sharon, snorted.
“Clinging Vine,” Leanne said.
“You mean like poison ivy?”
The women laughed, and Sharon reached out to punch the “up” button with an impatient finger.
“I heard Lynx is coming in today, too.” Leanne’s hushed tone pulled the other women’s heads into a tighter huddle.
Me? That upped the “I shouldn’t be eavesdropping” quotient by ten-fold.
“Have you seen her?” The tall woman’s brow knit into what seemed like genuine concern as she spoke.
“Lynx?” Leanne asked. “Not yet. From what I can piece together, they found her clinically dead at the scene of her plane wreck. Strike Force had to shock her back to life. I overheard Spencer say her captors had starved her down to eighty pounds. Just a lifeless bag of bones by the time our boys got to her. She wasn’t even recognizable the day she was rescued.” Leanne gave a whole-body shudder.
“Dead? Holy crap. Can you imagine?” The woman’s eyes grew wide.
“Makes me happy for my desk and chair,” Leanne said. “I don’t know why a girl would want to do that kind of job.”
“Well, as bad-ass as she is, I think Lynx is a sweetie.” Sharon’s whisper was barely audible; I had to strain to hear her from my position behind the directory. “And I was all ready to hate her, too. Scarlet sets a bad precedent for spy girls.”
“That’s for darned sure,” the woman said.
“Do you think Lynx knows Scarlet?” Sharon asked.
“If she didn’t know about her before, she’s going to soon.” Leanne raised a finger to her lips with a shhhh. “Spencer assigned Striker Rheas to Scarlet’s case – they’re partnered as a husband and wife team.” She gave an exaggerated eye roll, and adjusted her purse strap up higher on her shoulder.
Spencer was one of the three top commanders at Iniquus. If he personally assigned this case, then the file was classified, and I wouldn’t learn a darned thing about it. Or Scarlet. Leanne was committing a security violation just by discussing it, even here at Headquarters.
“A close-contact assignment with Commander Rheas? Scarlet’s dream comes true,” the woman said, disdain coloring her voice.
“Like every woman here at Iniquus doesn’t have that dream?” Sharon raised a single perfectly arched brow.
“Not Lynx,” Leanne said.
“No,” Sharon agreed. “She probably hasn’t even noticed she’s working for a demi-god. She’s been too busy battling it out with
the bad guys.”
“That girl’s life would make one hell of a movie,” Leanne said, turning her head as the elevator thudded down. They waited for the guy to roll his dolly out of their way. “More crap has happen to Lynx than any human being I know.”
“Why? What do you mean?” the other woman asked as they moved as a gaggle into the now empty car and the doors slid shut.
I decided to walk up to my office. As I took the steps two at a time, I replayed their conversation. Scarlet Vine. I had never heard anyone talk about an operative with that name before. I wondered which organization she worked for. Well, Striker would be undercover somewhere... Scarlet and Striker assigned as a married couple. Huh.
I came to a standstill outside my office door, watching Gater move up the corridor.
“Woot! She’s back!” Gater jumped up and tapped the ceiling with his hand.
The stress that had me grinding my teeth evaporated as I shot him a grin. “Hey there.”
Blaze whooped from down the hall. “Lynx is back in the saddle.”
I gave him a wave and opened the door to the Puzzle Room. My team members crammed into my office – eight in all: me, Gater, Blaze, Jack, Randy, Axel, Deep and Striker as our commander.
I looked over at Striker. Leanne was right--he was demi-god handsome with his rusty-blond hair cut military tight. His moss green eyes were full of intelligence, and he had carved his muscles out of granite during his SEALs training. He looked like sin on a plate. It made me hungry just looking at him.
When I walked in, Striker smiled at me with that infectious grin of his – slightly lopsided, beautiful white teeth, hint of dimple. “Welcome home, Chica. the Puzzle Room hasn’t felt the same without you.”
