“Who do you work for?” I pressed. “CIA? SIS? DGSE? Or are you a hired-gun?”
“Shut up, Christina.” The warning in his voice was clear.
“You really are, aren't you?”
His lips thinned. A sign that I probably should shut up. But I couldn't. This was too horrifying. Somebody hated my family and I enough that they would send a hired professional to kill us? “Jesús, María y José — what did my dad do? Hack into the Pentagon?”
My captor left the room.
The aspirin did help, though I was loath to admit it. The next day my fever went down significantly. I didn't throw up the soup my captor brought. He said nothing, but his satisfaction was evident. I was better — he was in the clear. Lucky him.
There was no more talk about assassins and government agencies. I caught him watching me even more carefully now and wished I'd had the sense to keep my suspicions to myself. He had enough reasons to kill me; I didn't want to give him more. I tiptoed around him. Even though I knew I stank, I waited a few days before asking for a shower.
Like all the times before, he took my clothes and waited outside while I washed, allotting me a very short amount of time to get dressed. I jumped when he barged in, feeling the urge to cover myself even though I was fully dressed. “My pants d-don't fit. They're too short.”
His eyes dropped to where my pants cut off, just above the ankle. I cleared my throat, face burning. “Next time…c-could I maybe have a razor?”
“No.” He yanked me out of the bathroom.
“That hurts.” What had I done to provoke him? Point out my hairy legs? “Where are we going?”
He didn't bother to respond. My imagination raced away from me. Is this the part where I talk, or he kills me? We stopped outside an ordinary-looking door — not his — and he kicked it open with the toe of his boot. I scanned the room anxiously. The floors were brown carpet that felt gross and dusty beneath my bare feet, and the gray wallpaper was peeling. Probably laced with lead, too. A mattress stood against the far wall, so stained and spotted with mildew that I tried not to think about what had transpired on it. On the mattress was a very thin blanket.
It didn't look like a torture chamber. It looked like a prison cell. There were even bars on the windows. He gave my arm an impatient tug that brought me stumbling to his side. “What is this place?” I asked, unable to keep the dread from my voice.
“Your new room.”
He gave me a little push that sent me tumbling to the floor. Not much of a fall, but my body immediately started to throb. I got to my knees, putting both hands to my head to stop the spinning. I felt him laying me down on the mattress. Oh, God, no. Disgusting.
“I've waited long enough. Are you going to tell me what you know about Pandora?”
“Why did I get a new room?”
“Answer the question, Christina.”
I hated the way he pronounced my name, staccato, emphasizing the first syllable like the boy's name, with a hard R that was almost a growl. Should I answer? He wouldn't have asked if he didn't have an ulterior motive behind it.
Promise me, Christina, that you will never open Pandora's box.
Where the two events linked? Did this have something to do with my dad?
My silence was making him mad. “Pandora,” I said, stalling. “She was a beautiful woman created by the Greek gods to punish humans for taking the secret of fire from Mount Olympus.”
He waved that aside. “Fairy tales.”
“Well, yeah,” I said slowly. “It's a creation myth, like Adam and Eve.”
“What about her box?”
“It contained all the evils of mankind — jealousy, sickness, poverty. Everything. The box was sealed and Pandora was told never to open it” — Promise me, Christina — “but the gods had made her insatiably curious so she did, and then all the evils flooded out.” I paused. “When she saw what she had done, she felt horrible and slammed the lid of the box back on, trapping hope, which was at the very bottom.”
“Hope isn't an evil,” my captor scoffed.
“Yes, it is. Hope is the worst evil of all.”
That night, the telephone rang.
Morgan Freemason was dead.
As a colleague, I barely knew him. The IMA was huge and he worked in a different branch, only coming into contact with me when I began moving up the ranks, supervising a wider range of operations. Morgan had been on the Brownstone case — two married operatives from the IMA and their three small children. They had all been murdered, and so was he. Their killer was also an operative, a new recruit, but he'd been working for somebody else all along.
I deployed a team of my men. They had captured him — a man named Everett Blythe. He had attempted to flee just as the Parkers had. Unlike them, though, he had no loyal friends to provide him with plane tickets and secret identities. His boss had fled at the first hint of trouble. My men caught up with him in California, where he had been trying to rent a boat. I suspected his destination was the South Pacific. Lots of uncharted private islands down there. Great place for a mobster to hide. They apprehended Blythe at the docks and delivered him to a storage locker I had rented under an assumed name. When I arrived, he was trussed up to a chair; an oversized pig for the slaughter.
“You,” he said.
“Dismissed,” I said to my men, who left without a word.
It was cold. The garage wasn't heated and it had snowed the night before, leaving the poorly-insulated metal walls chilled. My breath rose into the air in cloudy plumes. I flicked out my knife. “So you're the one who killed the Brownstones.”
I expected denial. He surprised me. “They put a bust on a drug cartel for cocaine in South America. Ruined a big cocaine deal. The economy collapsed. An entire village in Colombia was destroyed in the fallout. Hundreds of people lost their lives. Several more were left to rot in prison.”
“Spare me the noble bullshit,” I said. “You don't care about any of that.”
“And you do?” He clung to his bravado like a shield. “I've heard about you, Boutilier. About the sick shit you've done. Sounds like even you could give Callaghan a run for his money.”
He was sweating through that fancy suit of his and his eyes were frightened. But not frightened enough to suggest he actually believed the crap coming out of his mouth. If he did, he wouldn't be insulting me — he'd be pissing himself, begging for mercy that would never arrive.
I did not go out of my way to find people's weaknesses for the sole purpose of exploiting them. If I did, it was out of necessity; it gave me no sexual gratification. “You betrayed us,” I said, reigning in my anger at such fallacious comparisons. “You entered into a contract with the IMA knowing full well what the repercussions would be if that contract was terminated prematurely. You killed three highly respected operatives. I know money changed hands. That's a difficult request. And an expensive one. Not something you'd do for the hell of it.”
“They were going to get killed anyway. If it wasn't me, it would have been someone else.”
“And the children? Did they have to die, too?”
“Yes, they had to die, too,” he said, speaking in a sing-song tone as he threw my own words back at me. “I was ordered to kill everyone in the house, or I wouldn't get paid. Don't tell me you have a soft spot for little brats?”
“How I feel about this is of little importance. If you don't talk, you will still die.”
“A quick death is better than what they'll do to me if they find out I betrayed them.”
“That's where you're wrong.” I revealed the other implements I'd kept hidden in the pockets of my trench coat, letting him have a long, hard look at the steel tools. The crotch of his pants darkened and he began to struggle in earnest as I moved closer. “I don't recall saying I was going to kill you quickly.” My voice was pitched low, but I know he heard me. Everett Blythe was a small man, but in the confines of the garage he screamed loud enough for five.
Christina:
H
is car pulled up in front of the house early in the evening. I peered through the bars of the window trying to get an idea of the mood he'd be in and gasped aloud at the state of his appearance. Dirtied black boots, jeans, and a trench coat, which he pulled off as I watched, balling it up and locking it in the trunk. When he stepped out of the redwoods' skeletal shadows and into the dying light, I saw that his shirt was smeared with what could only be dried blood.
He looked around to make sure the coast was clear and then he looked up — and saw me. I gasped again, louder this time, and covered my mouth with both hands. Oh no. I ducked down and leaned back against the wall beneath the window ledge. If there had been any lingering doubts in my mind about what he was, they were gone.
Murderer.
I heard him coming up the stairs and stumbled to my feet, wishing I had somewhere to run as the door slammed open. “Spying is never a good idea, darlin. Not with me.”
“I didn't mean to — I was just — ”
“What? Enjoying the view?” He peeled off the bloody shirt. I averted my eyes.
“Murderer.”
“What did you think assassins did, you foolish girl?”
I ignored the barb. “Who was it? Who did you kill?”
I could feel him gauging me as he folded his shirt into a neat square, avoiding the bloody spots. “No one you know,” he said at last.
And I was relieved. Somebody had died and I was relieved because it hadn't been my parents.
I was a horrible person.
“Another innocent family?”
“A traitor.”
My mind spun with all the definitions “traitor” could encompass in this world I could never hope to grasp; this world where the lines between “good” and “evil” were so blurred that it was impossible to see where one started and the other ended.
“What did you do to them?”
He glanced at me. I took a step backwards, whimpering when he matched me step for step. “Why do you want to know that?” My back hit the wall and he hedged me into the corner, barring my escape with his arms. “You get off on hearing about that kind of shit?”
“N-n-no…” I tried to meet his eyes but was too scared. He smelled like sweat and blood and musk: a monstrous fuse of man and animal. I stared at my feet. “I-I just — ”
“It's none of your goddamn business.”
“Was this because of any information I gave you? Did I help you kill them?”
He paused a long time, then scoffed, “This had nothing to do with you.”
Nothing to do with me. I repeated those words to myself, like a chant. An absolution. Not my fault.
“The man I killed was directly responsible for the death of a very young family because of a petty grievance he'd nursed for the better part of a decade. He was a drug-dealer and a gangster, descended from a very long line of drug-dealers and gangsters, and he happened to be a particularly nasty and greedy one. Does that make you feel better?” His voice was sarcastic. “Does that make me the hero in your deluded little fantasy world?”
“No.” I still wouldn't meet his eyes. “I still think you're sick.”
My captor grabbed me, digging his gloved fingers into my cheeks. His bloody gloved fingers. “I'm an assassin. I'm whatever the job necessitates.”
I could smell the blood; it smelled like old, dirty pennies. “Then you're a whore.”
“I'm a mercenary.”
“What's the difference?” I spat. “You sell your body for money and you have no morals.”
His other hand slammed against the wall, making me jump. His fist left cracks in the plaster. “You're a naïve and foolish child to provoke me.”
“What do you want from me? My approval? I thought you didn't care what I thought.”
His eyes dropped, briefly, before flickering back to my face. Something changed. I saw him grow colder before my eyes. He laughed and it was joyless: a sharp, brittle sound. A mockery of real laughter. Then the heat of his body vanished, cold air rushing to fill his place. The door slammed. He'd left the room, taking his mangled, bloody shirt with him, leaving his previous insult ringing in my ears. A few minutes later, I heard the shower run.
Chapter Eight
Sabotage
Michael:
The cold water stabbed at my skin like dozens of tiny needles. I braced my arms against the tiled wall, letting the spray run down my back, over my hips, to pool at my feet. When I couldn't stand it anymore I shut off the water, swiping the drips from my face with the heel of my hand. Though my skin now felt shrink-wrapped, the mountain water had done nothing to cool my temper. Just thinking about my charge's attitude made me burn with rage and other, more troubling sensations.
What do you want from me?
Everything.
I wanted everything. And I had been so close to slamming her against the wall and taking it. Tangling my hands in her hair and tasting her. I could still remember the sweetness of her mouth, of the tender, yielding skin of her throat. When she insulted me, she made me feel vindicated; it was a rush — psychological and sexual — and I sought it out, provoking her, intimidating her, plunging us both deeper into the vicious cycle. It was unprofessional. I knew I should call the IMA, tell them to have Callaghan take over the case. In one with this uncertain of an outcome, forging relations with the hostage was catastrophic. But I couldn't — the case was mine.
She was mine.
I stepped into my jeans. A black strap over my chest kept my gun holstered to my hip, where it would be in easy reach in a pinch. I adjusted the strap and pulled on my shirt, doing up all but the last three buttons. My knife got tucked into my boot; it was the weapon I resorted to when all else failed. I grabbed my watch and gloves off the counter, forgoing the bulletproof vest for now. It was effective but hampering; the lead lining was heavy.
I dialed Kent's number as I pulled on my gloves, keeping the phone pinned at my shoulder. “It's me.” The leather creaked when I made a fist.
“Michael? How was Oregon?”
“A total no-show.” I filled a glass with water. “Both subjects fled the scene.”
“Parenting's gone downhill since I was a lad,” Kent said dryly.
I shook my head. “What kind of parent in their right mind would leave their daughter with a man like me? She's too sheltered; did they think she could possibly survive?”
Kent — wisely, I thought — affected thoughtful silence.
“I want your assessment on this case.”
“By when?”
I unlocked the cupboard and took out a jar of pills. Slipped the key back into my billfold. Shook out the maximum dose and crushed them with the bottom of the water glass, grinding the pills against the counter until they were reduced to a fine powder. “I'm going back to the agency this week. They're expecting a full report. I already submitted the debriefing — now I have to deliver the bad news again. In person.”
“Hard luck.”
“Luck is irrelevant.” I scraped the powder into my palm and sprinkled it into the water. Then frowned down at my gloves. The fingers were caked in whitish residue. “I need this done as soon as possible. My charge has healed and the window is about to close.” I wiped my hands on my jeans. “Look, the reason I called is that I need you to come down here tomorrow and help me sort out some of the particulars.”
“…Particulars?”
“I think there's a leak — a big one.” I stirred the water with a spoon. “One of the local mountain towns was crawling with cops. I didn't stay long enough to hear who they were looking for, but I suspect it might be yours truly.”
There was another pause, longer than the first. “What do you want me to do about it?”
That was why I liked him — straight and to the point.
“I have a list people who would stand to benefit from my disappearance. I'd like you to check them out…see what you can dig up.” I dropped the spoon in the sink and covered the water with plastic wrap, securing it with a rubber band. “Someth
ing has changed. I don't like it.”
“You're being very cautious.”
“With good cause.”
He sighed. “I'll see what I can do.”
“I appreciate that.” I put the glass in the fridge and leaned against the door. “How much is this going to cost me?”
“For you, Michael? Five hundred.”
“Thousand?”
Kent laughed. “Five hundred dollars.”
Five hundred dollars. Most mercenaries would have demanded ten times that amount — at least. An agent as sophisticated and efficient as Kent could easily charge twenty times more than that. I peeled the gloves off my now-sweaty hands and rubbed my eyes. “Quite the bargain.”
“Hardly. If you die, Old Boy, I lose one of my best customers. This is self-preservation.”
Christina:
At some point the water shut off. The ensuing pause filled the cabin with an imposing silence. I thought he might have left until I heard a door slam downstairs. It sounded like he was still angry. Calling him a whore had been a bad move on my part. I was regretting it more with every passing second.
He slammed around down there for a while and then I heard his footsteps coming back up the stairs. The door swung open: he stood in the doorway, his face devoid of expression. I flicked my eyes over him nervously. In his hands was a glass of water. Without saying a word, he set the glass on the ground. Water dripped from his wet hair with the gesture, soaking into the carpet.
I stared at the water glass, frosted with cold. I had insulted him, made him furious…and he was bringing me ice water? My brain drew the logical conclusion. Would this man poison me? Thirsty as I was, I made no move to take it.
“Have you had enough time to cool down?”
I didn't meet his eyes. “I thought you killed my parents.”
“I know. And I think you owe me an apology.”
His face was composed, but there was a tightness to his jaw that hadn't been quite so prominent before. “Excuse me?”
“I have tolerated your childish insults long enough.” His voice was like velvet — velvet that cloaked a poisoned blade. “I have been patient with your stunning lack of respect” — I must have made a noise because he added, viciously — “and I am not a patient man by nature. But my patience, or what's left of it, is wearing thin. You do not appear to grasp the severity of your situation.”
Cloak and Dagger (The IMA Book 1) Page 9
