by Tiffany Snow
Beau had already gone so it was just her and me.
“We need to rent a car or something,” I said, glancing around the lobby for the desk clerk. He’d probably be able to tell us how to do that.
“No need,” Alexa said, hoisting her duffel bag on her shoulder. “Follow me.”
Curious, I followed her outside. It was a gray day, no sunshine, and the air smelled damp. There was a definite chill in the air and I was glad for the jacket.
“You have a car already?” I asked, glancing around. I didn’t see one idling at the curb, just several parked along the narrow road.
“Something like that.” She headed for a nicer sedan, slightly larger than most of the cars. “This one will do.” Reaching into her pocket, she took something out that I couldn’t see. Standing in front of the driver’s side door, she fiddled until the lock clicked. Pulling open the door, she hit the locks. “Get in.”
I knew what she was doing and wanted to say something, but Devon was waiting. So I clamped my lips shut and got in. In seconds, she had started the engine.
“How are you doing that?” I asked. It was one of those keyless entry cars. You had to have a key in the passenger compartment for it to start.
She showed me what she was holding. It was smaller than her palm and there were several lights blinking.
“It’s a transmitter,” she said. “It sends thousands of signals per second to the car until it finds the right one that’ll do the trick. A little pricey, but worth it when I’m in a bind.”
“How much head start does Devon have on us?” I asked.
“A couple of hours.”
“How long will it take to get there?”
“All fucking day.”
Nice.
It took more patience than I thought I had to endure the hours we drove. Eventually, the silence and uncertainty of what awaited Devon—and us—got to me. So I tried to make conversation.
“You never did say why you didn’t send Devon back in a body bag, too,” I said, recalling Devon’s story about finding Alexa.
“I’d had enough,” she said with a shrug. “Killing people gets easier, but it wears on you. And Devon was such an ignorant sap, in the dark about so many things. I took pity on him.”
I didn’t think Devon would like it very much if he knew Alexa had taken pity on him.
“I hope you don’t mind me saying this,” I began, “but . . . you don’t look like much of an assassin. You’re just so . . . little.”
Alexa glanced at me and grinned. “I know. Makes it so much easier sometimes. People don’t expect it. And there are more ways of killing than brute force. I’m pretty adept at them all. Besides, people don’t want to believe I’m an assassin sent to kill them, even when it’s obvious. They’d rather believe a lie than the truth, though it’s staring them in the face.”
“That’s kind of a universal truth, though, isn’t it?” I said. I was trying everything I could to keep my mind off Devon, but it was hopeless.
“What will we be able to do when we get there?” I asked. “If she’s going to kill him, it won’t be right away, will it?” Please tell me no, though logically I understood she couldn’t possibly know.
“I thought you had a plan,” she said, frowning as she glanced at me yet again. I wished she’d keep her eyes on the road. It twisted and turned, the heavy clouds obscuring the sun as a light mist began to fall.
“I do, but not on how to get inside. I was hoping you’d know how to do that. Once we’re in, I can talk to her.”
“You’re planning on talking to her?” Alexa asked in disbelief. “That’s your big plan?”
“What did you think I was going to do?” I snapped back, stung. “It’s not as though I’m some kind of tiny, freak assassin.”
“Watch it, Beauty Queen. I’ll dump your skinny ass on the side of the road and not look back.”
I bit my tongue, not just because I thought she’d do it—she totally would—but it wasn’t her causing me to be snappy and on edge.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so worried about Devon . . . and so pissed off, I want to kill him myself.”
“Yeah, I’d be pretty fucking pissed, too,” she said. “I told him not to go, that he was making the wrong decision. But like a typical man, he wouldn’t listen.”
“So how do you get by?” I asked. “Do you just . . . freelance now?” I didn’t know what other euphemism to use for: So hey, do you hire yourself out to kill people?
“I don’t kill people anymore, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said. “I work in intelligence.”
“Intelligence?”
She looked at me like I was a total idiot.
“I’m a spy. I specialize in honey traps.”
My eyes widened. I’d seen enough movies to know what they were. A woman finds a target, gets him to sleep with her, and uses pillow talk to find out classified information. I was shocked, but tried not to show it.
Alexa laughed, the sound slightly bitter. “Yeah, that’s the usual reaction. Believe it or not, it’s harder than it looks. It’s the oldest trick in the book, so the high-profile targets—the ones who really have the information you want and aren’t just spouting bullshit to make themselves look more important than they really are—they’re trained on how to spot it. So it’s quite difficult to get them to trust me enough to talk.”
“I can’t imagine . . .” I said, looking at her in a whole different way. Not a bad way, because I thought she was probably right. “Sex,” I said. “A woman’s greatest weapon, or so I’d been told. Difficult to wield, though, without being hurt yourself.” I watched her closely and could tell I’d hit a sore spot because she winced, ever so slightly.
She shrugged. “Some things are worth being hurt for.”
I sensed she wasn’t going to say anything more about it, so I changed the subject.
“Beau seems to really like you.”
She looked at me, her expression one of disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” she said with a small laugh. “He hates me. He knows exactly what I do and it disgusts him.”
I’d seen the way Beau had looked at Alexa, at how he’d touched her when she was hurt, and disgust was the furthest thing from his mind.
“I don’t think so,” I said slowly, wondering at how she could possibly not see it when her livelihood depended on her ability to read men.
“Trust me. I know.”
I didn’t want to argue with her—after all, it’s not like it was my business.
“How much further?” I asked. Night was falling. It had been hours since we’d eaten, but instead of hunger my stomach was churning with anxiety and nausea.
“Well, we could park and walk the last couple of miles . . .”
I looked outside at the mist, which had transformed into rain, at the dark and forbidding landscape, and the utter lack of civilization. Then back at Alexa.
“Yeah, it was just a thought,” she said. “We’ll drive right on up to the front door. We won’t have to wait long for them to take us in, though I do hope they ask questions before they start shooting . . .”
Yeah, me, too.
It took another thirty excruciating minutes for us to reach the end of the road. And by “end of the road,” it was literally the end of anything you could drive on. There was a one-story building on our right, and straight ahead was a lighthouse, its strobe light turning slowly and sending its ray through the darkness. At its base was a small structure, not big enough to be a home but large enough to hold one person comfortably.
“You ready for this, Beauty Queen?”
I didn’t know why she persisted in calling me that, but it irritated me, and perhaps that was her intent: to get my mind off worrying and fear, and to focus. Because nothing quite made someone focus like being angry.
“I’m ready to save Devon, then kick his ass,” I said.
She grinned. “I am totally on board with that.”
Alexa drove the last couple of hu
ndred yards and pulled to a stop. I reached for the door handle as she turned off the engine, but the door flew open. Dark figures cloaked in black stood outside and I had no idea where they’d come from. I hadn’t seen them when the headlights had bounced over the landscape. But I could see them now . . . as well as the long assault rifles they held, several of which were pointed at me.
I could hear Alexa’s door open, too, and assumed the same thing was happening on her side of the car.
The muzzle of the closest rifle was about six inches from the center of my forehead and I broke out in a cold sweat. I swallowed, slowly lifting my hands in surrender even as my gaze was riveted to that relatively small, though deadly, black hole.
They didn’t speak, but they didn’t have to, now, did they.
I got out of the car, wincing as the cold rain hit my face in sharp, stinging blows. The wind had picked up, too, whipping my hair around. I was suddenly glad for the shorter haircut. It would’ve really gotten in the way had it been as long as when it was blonde.
The men—I counted five—prodded Alexa toward me. Her hands were similarly raised. The figures moved behind us and I felt the cold metal push against my back.
Their silence was unnerving, as was the howl of the wind and rain. It felt as though we were on the edge of the planet. I could hear the pounding of the surf against the rocks below the cliff just past the lighthouse. A bit of spray was visible from below, and I knew the ocean had to be churning something fierce for water to hit so hard that I could see it. What meager light there was glinted off some large cylindrical objects half-buried in the ground.
“What’s that?” I asked Alexa.
“UXO,” she said. “Unexploded ordnance. The military mainly use this area as an artillery and mortar range, large caliber ammunition since the Second World War. Stay away from them. They’re old and volatile, easily set off.”
I digested this as the men took us into the small structure at the base of the lighthouse and I shuddered once we were inside. My clothes were soaked through and I was freezing.
Rain beat against the windows, and I wondered where in the world we were all going—it was quite crowded in the small space—then I remembered what Alexa had said about it being underground. The guy beside me moved forward to a panel in the wall and pressed his hand to it. There was a blue light under what had seemed to be an opaque surface, which scanned down his palm, before the panel slid open.
He entered an elevator, then Alexa and I were herded in. The panel slid shut and we began descending.
“Mercenaries, eh?” Alexa mused. “I guess the Shadow isn’t what it used to be.”
None of the men replied or even acknowledged that they’d heard her speak.
The ride seemed long, making me wonder how far underground we were going. I was tense and scared, but also angry. Vega had controlled so many lives—including Devon’s and my own. It had to stop. She had to be stopped. And if the British government was too afraid to take care of its dirty laundry itself, then Devon and I would do it for them.
When the doors slid open, I thought I was prepared to see her again, thought I knew how I would feel. I was wrong.
I barely glanced at the room as the mercenary soldiers moved us out of the elevator. Two of them stayed and three went back upstairs. But all my attention was focused on the woman standing in front of a wall covered entirely in LCD screens. She wasn’t looking at us, but was watching the screens as intently as I was watching her.
Her blonde hair was swept up neatly in a French roll, and she wore a pale-pink skirt with a matching jacket. A white blouse and pearls peeked from underneath. It was incongruous. She looked like a straight-laced British grandmother about to take tea somewhere posh, not the coldly calculating woman I knew her to be.
“We picked up these women outside,” one of the men said. “Neither was armed.”
Vega took her time responding, and her obvious disdain for any threat we might pose rankled me. My entire life had been upended because of what she’d done. I was a wanted fugitive in my own country due to her.
My hands curled into fists, the nails biting into the flesh of my palms.
“Are we interrupting you?” I sneered. “I wouldn’t think you’d be very busy, forced into retirement as you are. The Shadow’s days—your days—are over.”
That got a reaction. She finally turned, her steely-blue gaze narrowing as she focused on me. It was chilling because now I could see the resemblance between her and Devon.
She smiled, her lips thin and her eyes cold. “Ivy. How are you feeling, my dear?”
I gritted my teeth, my whole body tense with the need to attack her.
“Easy,” Alexa murmured. “They’ll shoot you if you go after her.”
“Alexa,” Vega said. “I must say, I didn’t expect to see you again. Not with a price on your head.”
Alexa shrugged. “Maybe I just missed your warm hospitality.”
“Where’s Devon?” I asked. “He’s here. I know he is. What have you done with him?” My skin itched with the need to find him, to make sure he was all right.
Something flickered in her eyes, but I couldn’t tell what.
“Devon isn’t your concern,” Vega said. She walked slowly toward us, her hands clasped behind her back. Her face was flawless, age and the years marking her, but you could still see the beauty she must’ve been when she was young. “He’s returned to me and will be dealt with. I do, however, question why I am expected to endure your presence.”
“I’ve been learning a lot about you . . . Elizabeth. So much that it almost made me feel sorry for you.”
Only the slight widening of her eyes betrayed her reaction to my saying her real name.
“Is that why you’ve come?” she asked. “Because you think you have something on me? Trust me, if the British government can’t pin any crimes on me, you certainly won’t be able to.”
“You’ve been careful over the years, making other people do your dirty work,” Alexa said. “You’re quite clever.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Vega’s retort was said with utter disdain.
I noticed she glanced back at the screens on the wall again. The deliberate casualness of her actions made me suspicious. I scrutinized the wall but couldn’t see the images properly. We were too far away and the angle was wrong.
“Devon knows he’s your grandson,” I said. “We found your hometown, heard all about Mark Clay. And the son you had to give up.” I couldn’t help feeling a pang of sympathy despite everything.
Vega’s eyes narrowed and she got right up in my face. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me,” she hissed.
“That’s why you took Devon in, isn’t it?” I asked, ignoring her anger. “Somehow you found out what had happened to your son, and when he and his family were killed, you took in Devon.”
“It doesn’t take a bloody genius to work that out,” she said. Turning on her heel, she walked away, back to stand in front of the screens. Her arms were crossed protectively over her thin chest and for just a moment, I saw a flash of how she must’ve been years ago. Young and vulnerable.
“Devon came to see you,” I said. “He wants you to give me the cure.” I really hoped that had been what he’d said. His continued absence was worrying me.
“I’d imagine he would,” she said somewhat absently, still watching the screens.
“I’d think you’d want to as well,” I said. “Since I’m carrying your great-grandchild.”
And that was the bomb I wanted to drop, my one and only play. No, I wasn’t really pregnant, but Vega didn’t know that.
Her head whipped around, the screens forgotten.
“What did you say?”
“I said I’m pregnant. And if you don’t cure me, your flesh and blood will die right along with me.” I held my breath, hoping my instincts about why Vega had kept Devon around were right.
“You’re lying.”
“Maybe I am,” I said. “But maybe I’m n
ot.”
The room was silent as Vega and I stared at each other. At last, a bitter smile crossed her face.
“I would cure you,” she said, “not for your sake, you know of course. But I can’t. My scientist has left me. I have no way of forging the vaccine.”
Her words settled deep in my gut. So this was it then. Which really meant I had nothing left to lose.
I leapt at the guard on my right and Alexa followed suit with the guard on her left. We’d talked in the car about what to do, and she’d given me some tips on how to at least bide some time for her to take one of them out before moving on to the next.
I struck with the heel of my hand, getting him at the base of the nose and pushing upward. He stumbled back in surprise and pain, and I followed.
“If you’re up close, he won’t be able to swing his rifle around,” Alexa had told me. “Hand-to-hand is best for a short-term fight, though a woman can’t take the prolonged beating a man can. So best get it over with quickly.”
I hoped she’d take care of the “get it over with” part because I’d got him in the groin with my knee, but was rapidly running out of ideas.
There was a heavy thud behind me and Alexa’s guard hit the floor out cold, then she was a blinding speed of movement, shoving me out of the way and striking two blows to my guy that had him slumped on the ground in three seconds flat.
I froze, speechless at seeing her in action. Devon hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said she was lethal. Never judge someone by their size, obviously.
Spinning around to confront Vega, I was momentarily nonplussed. She was completely ignoring us, still watching the screens. Breathing hard, I glanced at Alexa in question. She, I noticed, wasn’t breathing hard. In fact, she looked like she’d just finished tying her shoe.
“Your guards seem to be having a bit of a lie-down,” Alexa said. “It’s so hard to find good help these days.”
“What’s on the screens?” I asked. “Because you’re looking at them very hard. Is there a program I’m missing tonight?”
“You want to see what I’m watching?” Vega asked without turning. “Then come here, child.”
Being called child again rankled me, but I bit my tongue against the snide retort that sprang to my lips. Antagonizing her would get me nowhere.
