My brain flipped into overload. I was clearly nuts anyway, so what did it matter? I copped an attitude.
“So shoot me already. Put me out of my misery. You’re a figment of my fucked-up mind anyway, so whatever.” I squatted down beside the hole again and nailed in the strip of blocking. Bang, bang.
I reached for the next piece and positioned it. Bang, bang.
I decided I liked doing construction work while I was insane. I didn’t even have to cut the pieces of wood, they were just there at hand when I needed them. And they fit perfectly. This was easy. I smiled and reached for the next piece.
There was a large black boot on it. I tugged, but the wood didn’t move. My gaze tracked from the boot up the camo-clad leg, ‘way, ‘way up to Kane’s face. He was frowning, but at least the gun wasn’t pointed at me anymore.
“Why are you still here?” I complained. “This is my delusion. I don’t want you here.” I glanced past him to where Webb still hovered in the doorway in his red shirt. I giggled and turned back to Kane. “But if he’s Ensign Expendable, why aren’t you dressed like Captain Kirk?”
“Where do you think we are?” Kane asked cautiously.
“Well, duh, in my bathroom. If you’re going to hang around, would you pass me that piece of plywood?”
He glanced over to where a square of plywood had appeared, leaning against the wall. Removing his foot from the two-by-two, he stepped over to pick up the plywood. I snatched up the blocking and nailed it into place. Bang, bang.
“Thanks.” I took the plywood from him and test fitted it over the opening. As I’d expected, it fit perfectly. I laid it aside and reached for the cordless drill that hadn’t been there a second ago. Materializing a piece of steel strapping out of thin air, I screwed one end of the strapping to the top of one joist, then passed the other end of the strapping under the stack drain.
“Hold this.” I placed the end of my level on the floor next to me, extending past the stack. I shot an impatient look up at Kane. He was frowning down at me, clearly puzzled.
“Come on,” I said, wiggling the end of the steel in his direction. He squatted down warily and grasped the end of the strapping.
“Pull up a bit. Bit more. Good, hold it,” I ordered when the top of the flange reached floor level. I reached over and screwed in the end of the strapping he had held.
“Stop,” he said firmly. “Look at me.”
When I did, I discovered he’d changed his clothes. Now he was clad in the T-shirt and jeans he had worn in the morning. Assuming it was still today in la-la land. I giggled again, teetering on the edge of hysteria.
“You look good in black,” I told him. “That army uniform wasn’t a good colour on you.”
“Aydan,” he said. “Come with me.” He stood and held out his hand.
I rose, too. Why had I ever thought he wasn’t handsome? He was amazingly hot. I stepped closer, unconsciously reaching for his extended hand. Then I remembered that getting busy with a hot guy was what had gotten me into trouble in the first place.
It was a trap!
I sprang back and my foot dropped into the hole in the floor, throwing me off balance. I flung up my arms in an attempt to right myself, but I was too close to the wall. I staggered back and struck my bruised head as I fell.
Blinding flashes of agony coursed through my skull, and I swore loudly and continuously, tapping into my considerable store of invective. The pain began to subside around the same time I ran out of fresh curses, so I stopped swearing and groaned wordlessly instead, rocking back and forth.
At last, I stopped moaning when the pain receded to bearable levels. An overly loud voice from above inquired, “Are you done?”
I cracked one eye open. Kane towered over me. “Can you clean it up a bit? There are ladies and children present,” he said, waving a hand toward Webb and Connor, now back in their original clothing. Kane seemed to be having difficulty keeping a straight face. His lips twitched, and he ran a hand over his mouth and chin.
I opened the other eye. Connor’s face was pale, his eyes wide. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?” he stammered.
“Not recently. She’s been dead for thirty years,” I snapped.
“Oh...” he sounded shell-shocked.
Spider Webb’s eyes were wide, too, but with awe and delight. “Wow,” he was saying, “Wow! I’ve never heard anybody swear like that, not even Hellhound! ‘Snot-gobbling fuck-pig’, I’ve never heard that one before.” His lips continued to move silently as if practicing his new vocabulary.
Kane turned his back to me, his broad shoulders quaking as if in laughter, but when he turned back, his face was composed. I crawled across the carpet and shakily propped myself against the wall, discovering as I did that we were back in the meeting room at Sirius Dynamics.
I propped my elbows on my bent knees and rested my aching head in my hands. “Sadly, I can’t take credit for the originality of the material,” I addressed Spider. “My Uncle Roger was an equal-opportunity thinker well before his time. He thought little girls should learn to swear just like little boys. I always loved him for that.”
I massaged my aching temples, fear gnawing at me. I was crazy. They were going to put me away. Just when I thought I was getting a new start. I’d been so excited about my new farm.
“We need to talk,” Kane said.
“Okay,” I mumbled, holding onto my fraying composure.
“Aydan, I want to search your waist pouch.”
“Okay.” I handed it to him.
Stay calm.
He went through it systematically, laying out its contents much as he had done with my backpack earlier. When it was empty, he turned the pouch inside out and examined it, too. Then he turned back to me.
“I’m going to need to search you, too. I’m sorry there isn’t a female officer here to do that, but it needs to be done right now.”
“I’m not carrying any weapons,” I told him. “The only sharp object I had was the jackknife in my pouch.”
“That’s not what I’m looking for,” he said, and helped me to my feet. I held my arms out from my sides and he patted me down thoroughly but impersonally while the other two looked on.
Shit, I get felt up by a hot guy for the first time in friggin’ years, and I’m stuck with an audience and about to be incarcerated.
“You can sit down now,” Kane said a few minutes later. I let my trembling knees drop me into a chair and mechanically began to repack my waist pouch. “Nothing,” Kane said to the others, his face showing bewilderment.
“That’s not possible,” Spider said. “We need to try the RFID scanner.”
“I’ll get it,” said Connor, rousing himself from his trance to go out the door.
Spider sat down at his computer again, rapidly clicking keys. “That’s impossible,” he said again.
“What?” Kane asked, moving over to look at the screen.
“I just reviewed the data record, and there’s no RFID signature for her.”
They put their heads together, muttering over the laptop, and I slumped in the chair. Nothing mattered now. I was nuts. I’d be in an asylum, or in jail. My beloved cars would end up in someone else’s garage. My dream of living in the country, my bright new life, all shrivelling away to dust and ashes.
Mike Connor returned, bearing a handheld electronic device. Spider took it from him and waved it over my body, much like the metal-detecting wands in airport security. I sat still, staring blindly into middle distance and clamping down panic. Stay calm.
Maybe the insane asylum would let me go outside with supervision. Maybe they’d let me paint. Painting was nice.
Don’t panic. Think about painting.
I stepped up to the big easel and opened the can of liquid white paint. With my one-inch brush, I applied an even coat over the canvas, just the right amount. I squeezed out a dab of blue on my palette and barely touched the brush to it. With short criss-crossing strokes, I applied the paint, darker at the edges,
fading toward the middle. A nice, translucent summer sky...
A large hand reached out and held my wrist securely. I tried to move my arm away, but the hand didn’t let go. I looked up. Kane again. He was still wearing civilian clothes. Nice to know he’d heeded my wardrobe advice.
“Come with me,” he said.
“Where are we?” I implored. “We were just in the meeting room. We can’t be here. I don’t even know where here is.”
I waved a hand at the white void around us. It reminded me of a blizzard whiteout. Suddenly I was freezing, snowflakes whipping by on a rising wind. The easel was gone, but Kane was still there, holding my wrist.
“Come with me,” he repeated, pulling me toward him. This time I didn’t resist. I just let him tow me into the whiteness.
Chapter 13
“Unnngghh,” I said, or words to that effect. I rested my elbows on the meeting room table and cradled my throbbing head in an attempt to prevent my eyeballs from exploding. At least I wasn’t on the floor this time. I breathed through my teeth for long moments until the pain subsided a fraction.
“Well, that’s better,” Kane said unsympathetically.
“Define better,” I gritted.
“You didn’t make Connor’s ears bleed, and you didn’t pass out this time.”
“Marvellous. I wish I had.”
“Which do you wish you’d done?” Spider asked, getting back some of his own.
“Both. Not necessarily in that order.”
“Aydan, I need you to stay with us,” Kane said.
“I presume you mean mentally. That would definitely be my preference,” I agreed. “Any hints on how to accomplish that?”
Kane shrugged, looking frustrated. “If I knew, we’d all be happier,” he said. He turned to Connor. “We need to get some input on this. I want to meet with you and Sandler at,” he consulted his watch, “four o’clock. Set it up, would you?”
“Today?” Connor objected. “It’s Sunday. I already had to call Mr. Sandler at home for your security clearances, and he wasn’t pleased at all. Can’t we do it tomorrow?”
Kane skewered him with a look. “He’s the head of security. We have a major security breach. If you’d reported it right away, we’d have two suspects to question.” He glanced at me. “Now we only have one. Get on it.”
“We’ll need Smith, too,” Spider added.
Kane nodded. “And Smith. Four o’clock,” he repeated. Connor trailed out.
Kane turned his attention to Spider. “We’ve got reasonable cause now. Call down to Calgary and get a search warrant for Ramos’s place ASAP. Get search warrants for both of Ms. Kelly’s places, too, while you’re at it. Get Wheeler and Germain to bring up the Silverside ones. I’m going to need them to do the searches up here right away. Get Richardson to do the search at Ms. Kelly’s place in Calgary. And get digging for anything that relates to this. I’ll need your expertise in this meeting.”
“Right. I’ll talk to Larkin, too, and get all the fob records from last week forward.” Webb headed for the door. “Oh, those records checks came up while you were in the... gone,” he added obliquely. “Chief Petty Officer Second Class Roger Kelly, served with the HMCS Bonaventure 1958 to 1970, when the Bonnie was decommissioned and he left the navy. The other check came up completely empty. I’ll dig deeper, but so far it looks like what you see is what you get.”
“Thanks,” Kane said. Spider waved and followed Connor out the door.
“Checking up on me?” I asked.
Kane frowned. “There’s a lot about you that doesn’t add up. It was nagging at my subconscious before I ever saw that data record, and now... now I want some answers.”
“So do I,” I snapped. “I want to know how the hell you got inside my head and filmed my private thoughts. From all angles, I might add.”
“You’re not in a position to demand answers,” Kane said flatly. “If you cooperate with me now, things might go easier with you in the long run. It’s your choice.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I stammered. “I don’t even know what I did.” I leaned my head in my hands, massaging my still-aching temples.
“Really.” Kane’s voice was hard. “Here’s how I see it. You and Ramos collaborate. You succeed. You... celebrate.”
He eyed me coldly. “Then, you have a falling out. Maybe you disagree over where to sell your information. Or maybe one of you wants a bigger cut. He follows you to Calgary to eliminate you. I conveniently show up and shoot him for you. And you pretend to be an innocent victim. It almost worked, too.”
“I’m not a spy! I’d never seen him before. I was just having a fantasy...” I felt my face heat up and babbled on. “I was inside my own head. I don’t know how you recorded it, but I didn’t know him, I don’t know how I imagined his face, I was just...”
“You’re not a spy,” he mocked. “In the last twenty-four hours, I’ve watched you jump out of a moving vehicle, shrug off a gunshot wound, be completely unfazed by a corpse with a bullet hole in its head, develop an elaborate rooftop escape plan, scale a wall, and fight off a biker. Let’s see, did I miss anything? Oh, yes, whenever you enter a public area, you scope out all the exits and choose the seat with the best defensive advantage. And you coincidentally show up unauthorized in a secured facility. But no, you’re not a spy.”
The terror rose again. Jail. Captivity.
I breathed.
In. Out. Ocean waves. Think ocean waves.
The waves rolled in, soaking my shoes. Seagulls cried in the gray sky and rain misted my face. The briny ocean smell surrounded me.
Completely disoriented, I froze for a moment before giving in to panic. I bolted along the deserted shoreline, kicking up sand and pebbles. An enormous tumble of boulders loomed up in front of me as if from thin air, and I flung myself into their shelter, scrambling over their shifting bulk. My overused muscles burned with the effort while I burrowed deeper into the rubble. At last, I found a dark cave and curled into it, my breath sobbing in my chest.
As my breathing steadied, I took stock. Kane was nowhere to be seen. This probably counted as resisting arrest. Not good. Staying around to be arrested... also not good. Talk about a rock and a hard place. I shifted uncomfortably. Too bad rocks weren’t soft and warm.
Obligingly, the rock around me warmed to a cozy temperature, and I relaxed into cushy comfort.
Wait a minute.
I gathered my scattered wits and thought over my experiences thus far. As far as I knew, insanity didn’t conform to logical parameters. But as I reviewed each episode in which I’d departed the reality of the boardroom, some rules seemed to apply.
In the bathroom, events had proceeded logically and sequentially. With the exception of the costume changes for the men, everything had occurred just as I’d expected. Want a piece of wood; there it was, just the right size. Need a piece of strapping; pull it out of thin air.
And the painting episode. I’d been thinking about painting, and then suddenly, there I was, painting. Hmmm, come to think of it, I’d been thinking of working in the bathroom earlier, too, right before it appeared. I’d thought about calming ocean waves, and here I was, listening to ocean waves. Go figure.
So far, if I’d concentrated on something specific, it happened. I wonder...?
I concentrated on a pink hippopotamus in a tutu. Sure enough, one popped up on the rocks in front of me, pirouetting gracefully.
Okay, the pink hippo was a little disturbing. I banished it with a wave of my hand.
What if I wanted to be hiding in a forest instead of a rock pile?
From my seat on a fallen log, I breathed in the moist, spicy forest air, cedars swaying above me. The vividly green ferns nodded in the breeze. I straightened, smiling. Being crazy wasn’t so bad after all.
With a dramatic sweep of my arm, I painted the forest floor with daffodils and snowdrops. Another wave of my hand, and a waterfall appeared, its cascading stream just below my feet.
I could create
anything. I laughed in sheer delight. I made it rain, then made the sun come out, lighting up the forest. With a grand gesture, I dried my wet shoes and removed the bloodstain. As an afterthought, I dried my clothes, too.
Something crackled in the undergrowth behind me and I turned, expecting, creating a deer. Sure enough, there it was. It bounded away in alarm.
No wonder.
My mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Nice forest,” Kane said.
A cage blinked into existence around me, shrinking rapidly. My first whimpers started as the cage contracted, its bars thickening. I flung myself against my shrinking prison, battering my hips and shoulders. Mindless wails escaped me.
I tried to close my ears to the hoarse cries of agony from my familiar nightmares, but the apparition loomed closer, horribly visible through the remaining gaps between the bars. Screams ripped my throat while the broken body writhed, impaled on the post. The cage crushed inward, constricting my lungs. My screams stifled, I wheezed fast shallow breaths in my terrified fight for air.
“Aydan!” Kane’s voice cut through the horror. “Go somewhere else!”
I burst free to collapse onto a park bench, frantically gulping the crisp spruce-scented air. Echoing silence surrounded me while I stared across the long valley, concentrating on the distant peaks beyond. I wrapped my arms around myself, gasping and shuddering and willing the open space with everything I had.
As panic receded, I realized Kane was standing silent and motionless a few yards away. My breath caught in my throat, but he made no move toward me. I wrestled for control and focused again on the view.
A couple of yards from my feet, the shoulder of the mountain fell away in a breathtaking sheer drop. Almost a thousand feet lower, the lake glittered blue, reflecting the vivid sky. A wispy cloud drifted below us, dissipating quickly in the autumn sun.
“Where are we?” Kane asked, his voice quiet and conversational.
“Mount Indefatigable. Kananaskis Country,” I quavered. “In the fall, about twenty years ago. This bench isn’t there now. Here now. Whatever.”
“Why don’t you come away from the edge?” The same low-key, non-threatening tones.
Never Say Spy (The Never Say Spy Series Book 1) Page 8
